


Double Vision

by candrahearts



Category: Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!
Genre: (there are parts that describe the robot monkey surgery/building process), Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Crying, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, No Sexual Content, Surgery, Team as Family, i suffered while writing this so you are all gonna suffer with me, it's rated M for descriptions of surgery, mostly by me, none of the canon characters die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candrahearts/pseuds/candrahearts
Summary: In a universe where the monkeys are from a species where twins are the norm, the Alchemist began the Robot Monkey Project with nine monkeys, one single and four pairs of twins. Six of those monkeys survive to be built into the Robot Monkeys that would go on to protect Shuggazoom. Three of those monkeys do not.Gibson collapsed to his knees in front of the keyboard, forearms pressed against the ridges of the console, fists pressed into his lenses almost hard enough to crack them. It couldn’t be true. Their siblings. Their own flesh and blood. Their twins, born from the same mother, from the same womb. They had died, and they had no memory of this.
Relationships: Antauri (Super Robot Monkey Team) & Original Character(s), Chiro & The Monkey Team (Super Robot Monkey Team), Otto (Super Robot Monkey Team) & Original Character(s), SPRX-77 (Super Robot Monkey Team) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This plot bunny came from [ this amazing post on the monkeys possibly being twins](https://superrobotmonkeyteamramblingsgo.tumblr.com/post/612268365393936384/going-off-my-spottova-twin-post-if-the-monkeys) by [ superrobotmonkeyteamramblingsgo](https://superrobotmonkeyteamramblingsgo.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! The post asks "How would the monkeys react to knowing they had a dead sibling, maybe one who didn’t survive the building process the Alchemist did to them?"
> 
> And that is the question I answered in this fic.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Otto began.

Each member of the team knew that when Otto began a sentence like that, he had indeed been thinking very hard about something, and either something very profound or very silly was to follow. Sparx hid a snort behind his hand.

“Why is it that I’m always fixing things?” the green Monkey continued. “I feel like I’m always fixing something.”

“Uh, because things are always broken?” Nova said, deadpan, raising a brow.

“The Super Robot does get damaged on a regular basis,” Antauri said, smiling.

Otto shook his head. “No, I know that. I mean, like, why am I always rewiring the boards or the consoles? Why am I always replacing circuitry and fixing the radar?”

“Well, I suppose it’s because you are maintaining the Super Robot’s systems,” Gibson said. “And of course that maintenance keeps them in good working condition for when the team needs them.”

Otto was silent for a second, rubbing his chin. “Yeah, okay. Maintenance does keep the systems in good shape.” He sat up straight. “But you know whose systems haven’t been maintained at all?”

“Who?” Nova asked.

“The Alchemist.”

The Monkeys all looked sharply at each other. They hadn’t given the Alchemist’s computers much thought at all.

“You’re right, Otto,” Chiro said, turning to look at him. “When we were there… well, I don’t remember it much, but you guys saw it. It was really dusty and dirty and the computers didn’t seem to be working.”

“I wonder what kind of data the Alchemist kept in his database,” Gibson mused. “I wonder if there is anything there that would be useful for us to have.”

“He made us, didn’t he?” Sparx noted offhandedly. “Probably kept records of that. Maybe blueprints or something.”

Chiro’s mouth flattened into a line. “Hmm.”

“The Alchemist’s computers have to be about the same age as ours,” Otto said, waving at the big monitor and console. “But nobody did any maintenance on them at all since… eh, since we left, however long ago that was.”

“I’m sure they are quite rusted and broken and it would most likely be prudent to copy the data before it is all lost,” Gibson said.

Chiro nodded. “Gibson, if you have the time, I’ll assign that to you. To go to the Alchemist’s lab, copy the data, and get it back here so we can have it in our own database. Otto, get him something to copy it onto.”

Otto nodded and took his green tube upstairs.

“But Chiro, do you not need me here?” Gibson queried. “If the computers are so old, copying the data could take quite some time.”

“It’s okay,” Chiro replied, sighing. “It’s something I never would have thought of, but it is important, and I’m willing to prioritize it.” His gaze flicked over to Antauri’s and the silver Monkey gave him a very slight nod.

“Very well, Chiro,” Gibson agreed.

Otto’s tube landed down on the floor with a  _ swshoosh _ and the green Monkey stepped out of it. He walked over to Gibson and dropped a rectangular metal box about the size of a small book, about four by six by two inches, into his hands. “Here ya go. This should be able to hold everything you’re gonna find.” He dropped a cable on top of the box. “And here’s the connector.”

Gibson took a deep breath. “All right. Thank you, Otto.” He looked up at Chiro. “Should I take the Fist Rocket?”

“It’s a lot faster to fly to the Savage Lands,” Chiro told him. “If you took a moon buggy it’ll take you a long time to drive there. Just take your Fist Rocket. If we need it back we’ll call you, and just get back here as fast as you can, all right?”

“Sound a little risky, kid,” Sparx noted.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Chiro said firmly.

Gibson nodded. “I will return as quickly as possible with the data.”

“Be careful, Gibson,” Nova said, brows pinching together. “Who knows what you’re going to run into over there.”

“I promise I will call if I run into any unforeseen dangers,” Gibson said.

Chiro nodded. “Got it. Hyperforce, go!”

Gibson wrapped up the hard drive and placed it in the Fist Rocket’s cargo locker. He pursed his lips as he set his course for the Savage Lands and the Alchemist’s laboratory. Sparx and Otto were both correct, the computers in the lab were in rough shape and the data was most likely, if not essential, at least of value records-wise. They’d never been given a full record of their past, and truly they did not remember most of it, given the Alchemist’s wiping of those memories. It would be good to have those records for posterity. And Otto could benefit from any blueprints and schematics he happened to find.

The Fist Rocket detached from the Robot’s wrist and changed into vehicle mode. He threaded Shuggazoom’s skyscrapers, passed over the large Seas, and left the City far behind him.

It was perhaps a twenty-minute flight, over Shuggazoom’s Plains and Canyons, far out into the Zone of Wasted Years. He knew he was getting close when the massive thorny vines changed abruptly into thick dark trees. His radar beeped and he banked left. There it was. A metal building with a pointed roof, covered with thick vines and mosses.

Gibson landed his Fist Rocket next to the building and unjacked himself from the system. Taking the hard drive in his hand, he made his way out of the cockpit and out onto the soft dirt of the forest floor. He shuddered, a cool shiver working its way up his spine. This place was so unsettling. Perhaps it was the remnants of evil magic that still lingered, perhaps it was his deepest instinct fearing creatures far larger and more dangerous than himself, perhaps it was the cold itch of memories that he couldn’t seem to remember. He shook his head and pushed the Alchemist’s door open, closing it tightly behind him.

He let out a whoosh of a sigh and looked around. There were books everywhere, and more books still on the upper level where Chiro had assembled the Silver Monkey. Every surface was just as dusty as ever. The stasis tubes were still covered in dust, except the one filled with purple liquid that had had its dust wiped away by Chiro’s hand. Gibson sneezed and rubbed his nose.

Directing his attention to the computer, he fiddled with the cables for a moment and managed to turn it on. It made a distressing noise that was somewhere between a rusty screech and a dial tone, and all Gibson’s fur stood on end. “Gaaahh!” After the monitor finally managed to light up and the colors settled, Gibson found that there was no way to attach the connector from the outside of the computer. He groaned and got down on his hands and knees and searched for a panel that would have more connections. He found a big one at the center of the computer’s plating. After a few minutes of struggling with the rusty screws, he got it open and hooked up the hard drive.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said to himself, clicking open the database and beginning to search and copy the data.

* * *

“Gibson to Nova, come in, Nova. Respond.”

Nova stopped her punching bag on the backswing and opened her antennae. “Nova here. I read you, Gibson.” Gibson said nothing further for a long moment, and Nova could hear what seemed like the tapping of keys on a keypad, then a long sigh. Nova stood up straighter and glanced toward her door, contemplating taking her Foot Crusher over to the lab. “Gibson, are you okay? Are you in trouble?”

“No!” came his answer. “No, Nova, I’m all right. I just… found some… information in the Alchemist’s database that has me troubled.”

Nova’s tail went pin straight and she inhaled sharply. “I can get the team, we’ll all meet you over there. Or I can get just Otto to meet you, if you need help with the computer.”

“No, Nova,” he said again, and that negative was punctuated by another long sigh. “I just had a question for you, if you had a moment to answer it.”

Nova stopped, halfway to her door. “Sure. What is it?”

“Well… in searching the Alchemist’s database, I have found… extra information, extra data that has me a bit… unsettled.”

“Yeah, okay?” She bit her lower lip and instead walked over toward her storage shelves.

“Please… stay calm and rational about what I am about to ask you, Nova,” came Gibson’s voice again. He sounded like he was straining to keep his voice calm, and that worried her. What could he have found that was so worrisome? “Here is my question.” He took a deep breath. “Do you remember ever having children?”

Nova’s arm jolted hard and her clock took the brunt of the blow. It hit the carpet face down and the glass shattered. Her hand flew to her stomach and the muscles clenched hard. “Gibson!”

“Remember what I just said, Nova. Please don’t get angry, just remain calm and think.”

Nova’s other hand flew to her head, her eyes wide as saucers. Children? Babies? Had she… had she had children before? No, no, she couldn’t recall that ever happening. “No, I… I feel like I would remember that…” She would remember. Her body would remember. “Gibson… why would you ask me something like that?”

There was another long sigh over the comm line. “I have found data, records, of other monkeys that the Alchemist was raising. I found names that are unfamiliar and am attempting to locate more details. I did not mean to alarm you, Nova, I merely meant to exhaust any possible explanation.”

Nova blew out a breath and leaned against the wall. Okay, it wasn’t as bad as she thought. He hadn’t found anything definite, just something puzzling. There were a ton of other explanations for unfamiliar names other than the possibility that she’d had children she didn’t remember having.

Although she had an odd feeling that the actual explanation wasn’t going to be any more reassuring.

* * *

Gibson sighed and closed his antennae. Nova’s negative response to his query made him feel only marginally better. The new problem was that that question had been his strongest hypothesis on where the unfamiliar names had come from. Possible answers were drawn up only to be immediately discarded. Had they been possible options for their names? Had they been nicknames? Were they the names of… of their parents? Would the Alchemist even have records of that? His fingers flew over the keyboard as he opened folder after folder. The Alchemist had apparently been very organized, but that meant folders and subfolders and sub-sub folders, and it was just a lot to go through.

He stumbled upon a scanned document noting developmental milestones, which was organized by pairs of names. Each familiar name was paired with an unfamiliar, save Nova who was paired with himself. That told Gibson that those names did belong to other monkeys, actual physical beings. And all those milestones… had happened within approximately the same time frame. That told Gibson that those strange monkeys were the same age as them.

He didn’t like the implications of that.

Gibson clicked out of the document and found a folder containing a dozen or so video logs. He remembered that one of the ways that the Alchemist had recorded the process of his research was in video form. Perhaps these videos would afford him some answers to all his burning questions. He opened the folder.

The Alchemist appeared on the screen, and he seemed to be in good health. Gibson checked the date stamp and it seemed to be from immediately after the portal incident. His brow creased and he pressed play.

The Alchemist sighed and put his head in his hand.  _ “Log date 071051. Evening. Tomorrow is the day of truth, the day I will begin the process that will build my monkeys into robot monkeys. I am entrusting this data to my database, in hopes that after I am gone, all of them will not forget my work. I began with nine healthy young primates, seven males, two females. Mandarin, my firstborn, the only singleton. Eldest by eighteen months. Then after him, Antauri and Delphei. Sparx and Natsu. Nova and Gibson. Otto and Lucy. Each born a pair of twins that would not allow themselves to be separated.”  _

Images of ordinary primates began to appear on the screen, and Gibson recognized many. Orange fur, permanently creased brow – Mandarin. Then a pair of images, one with pure black fur and a calm, serene expression – Antauri, with a monkey he did not know, violet fur and a shy expression. Another pair popped onto the screen, one with dark pink fur and a smirk – Sparx, alongside another monkey with maroon-colored fur and a wide smile. Yet another pair, both of which he knew, himself and Nova. And the last pair, one with medium green fur and a bright grin – Otto, with a monkey with lime-green fur and a sweet smile. Gibson’s heart shot up into his throat and stayed there.

The Alchemist went on.  _ “Each of them carries so much potential. I pray that all of them will survive the process that I am about to begin… but I fear not all of them are suited for it.” _

The recording crackled out and Gibson felt a hard weight settle in his stomach. With shaking fingers he searched for the next nearest log date.

_ “Log date 071151. Noon,” _ came the Alchemist’s voice as the recording opened. He wiped his hand across his face and Gibson caught sight of a glistening at the corners of his eyes.  _ “I began the injections. All of the monkeys took it well except for Natsu. His body rejected the reinforcing steroids and his health is declining rapidly.” _ The Alchemist rubbed his hand over his face again. _ “I feared this would happen. No matter how much I modified their genes as infants, no matter how much I tried to prepare their bodies for the strain they would go under once the building began, there was always a possibility that something like this would happen.” _ He carefully laced his long fingers together before speaking again.  _ “I am doing all I can to help him. I gave him more injections that would hopefully reduce the pain and counteract the initial, but I fear it is out of my hands.” _ His brow furrowed and his eyes squeezed shut.  _ “As for the rest, they are all worried sick as they have become very close with each other. I am caring for them as usual, and I have scheduled their next steps for a few days from now.” _ He put his clasped hands to his mouth and seemed to be choosing his words carefully.  _ “I am drawing on all my knowledge, on all my collected wisdom from my research. I will find a way to help my little red monkey.” _

The stone in Gibson’s stomach flipped over and settled harder, and as he searched for the next log, he knew what was coming. That monkey with the deep red fur…

The next log opened and the Alchemist turned to look at the camera. His eyes, mismatched blue and red, were rimmed red.  _ “Log date 071451. Evening,” _ he said, and Gibson could hear the exhaustion in his tone.  _ “My worst fear has come to pass. I have lost one of my little monkeys.” _ He sighed heavily, chest heaving, and he put his face in his hand. Gibson noted with only a sliver of curiosity that he had a white bandage wound round his hand.  _ “Natsu passed away this afternoon. I thank the Power Primate that he was not in any pain. I had him safe in my arms, with his brother holding his hand, as he breathed his last.” _ He ran his uninjured hand over the bandaged one.  _ “Sparx is inconsolable and furious, and in that fury, he bit me. He would have done worse, I’m sure, if Antauri and Delphei had not pulled him away. I’m sure he blames me for his brother’s death, and I for one cannot blame him for thinking so.” _ He sighed.  _ “Otto and Lucy are trying to console him, and I am not sure that even Lucy’s sweet disposition will be able to help.” _ His mouth twisted.  _ “I’m sure Clayton would have considered me insane for continuing the Robot Monkey Project after losing one of them. But there is evil coming, and Shuggazoom needs its protectors… and so I must work onward.” _

The log finished and the computer emitted a low questioning tone.

Gibson didn’t hear it. He was too busy trying not to be sick.

He knew. He knew as surely as if he’d read the data sheets themselves. Those other two monkeys– Antauri’s twin, Delphei, and Otto’s twin, Lucy– they also did not survive.

He pressed his hand to his mouth as his stomach roiled, his eyes shrunk to shocked points. And to make matters… somehow impossibly worse, he and Nova had been the only pair of twins where both had survived. How could that be, what had they done that none of those other monkeys couldn’t?

He couldn’t bear to watch the rest of the tapes. He knew what they would say, what he would see. He collapsed to his knees in front of the keyboard, forearms pressed against the ridges of the console, fists pressed into his lenses almost hard enough to crack them. It couldn’t be true. Their siblings. Their own flesh and blood. Their twins, born from the same mother, from the same womb. They had died, and  _ they had no memory of this. _

He shouldn’t be half as surprised at that as he was. He knew they’d had their memories wiped at the end of their time with the Alchemist. But at the same time, he felt utterly betrayed. How could he take this from them? What purpose did it serve?

Another thought came hot on the heels of that question. The Alchemist said he’d feared that some of them wouldn’t make it. Did he know? Did he plan for it? Was the... the entire reason he started with so many monkeys… to have a built-in  _ buffer _ for when they inevitably died during the process? His whole body shook with the fear and agony of that thought.

Now, Gibson didn’t consider himself an emotional monkey. He was a logical being. Science had no room for emotions. It was facts and facts alone.

But he found himself kneeling on the cold floor of the Alchemist’s lab, hands pressed tight to his face,  _ weeping _ . He sobbed and coughed and shook and fought down the dizzy nausea that crept up his throat. His body was reacting violently to this knowledge, to this anger and fear and revulsion.

He finally managed to calm himself, and he stayed kneeling on the floor for long moments, vision unfocused, hands pressed hard to the cold tiles. He couldn’t tell the others. They… they didn’t deserve to be subject to this awful situation. He’d discovered this knowledge, and so it was his burden to bear. It was another few minutes before he could make himself stand, and another few minutes before he could stop shaking over the keyboard. He had to get the data. That’s why he was here.

Did he even want this data, though? The cool, logical part of his mind was telling him in no uncertain terms that all data was data worth having. The other part, though, the part of his mind that was emotions and instincts, was telling him to leave it. They didn’t need it, it would only cause pain, and he needed to distance himself from it. Gibson ground his teeth and with herculean effort chose the former. He couldn’t make himself watch the tapes now, but there was always a chance, no matter how minuscule, that they would need the data they contained. He would just make sure he was the only one with access to their contents.

He spent the better part of the afternoon copying all the folders onto a spare hard drive Otto had given him. The Alchemist’s computers were very old and very  _ broken _ . He cursed himself for thinking he could quickly and easily complete this task himself.  _ Power Primate, _ he should have sucked it up and asked Otto to come with him to help. He didn’t want to bother the green Monkey, Otto had dozens of little projects to work on, but doing it this way was such an aggravating waste of time. But at the same time… it was just as well that he didn’t ask him to come along. He didn’t want any of the others to see the data before he could separate and organize it, and if Otto had come along, he would have seen… Gibson put his forehead in his hand. No. No, he couldn’t have that. And it was fine. The copying would be done when it was done, and he could get some reading done in the meantime.

While the data copied agonizingly slowly, he kept himself busy by sifting through some of the books and notebooks the man had left behind. The majority were on the sociology, biology, and psychology of the species of monkey they were. Some were notebooks filled to bursting with handwritten notes and logs about their growth and development. Gibson noted with his heart in his throat that the three missing monkeys were also catalogued here. He closed the notebook and put it back on the shelf.

Still others were books of magic, some thin volumes, some great tomes, each containing many, many spells of all types. Some of the pages were bookmarked with strips of colored paper—each seeming to be color-coded to the monkey that that magic would be for. He stopped at a blue-marked page and read the heading.  _ Collapsible Dimensional Storage. _ There was a note scrawled in the corner of the page that read “ _ for Gibson’s cybervac drills.” _ The blue Monkey looked at his hand, front and back, then opened his cybervac drill. It made logical sense that the Alchemist had used magic to interfere with laws of matter and space. He’d found himself wondering quite often where all the substances in his drills went when the drills were put away. Quite interesting.

He’d never been one to understand magic. He had once told the team that he firmly believed that it was merely will manipulating reality on the quantum level… but wasn’t that what magic actually was, anyway? Will manipulating reality? He shook his head and closed the book of magic, putting it back on the shelf. Hopefully the Alchemist had backed up the information on the computer so it would be available for the database, but if not, he could always come back. He was here for the computer data, but he really wanted to read all the books. Someday, when he had the time.

It was late in the afternoon when the computer finally finished copying onto the hard drive. Gibson breathed a sigh of relief and picked up his armful of books he’d decided were important enough to take with him. Two little magic tomes, the developmental milestone notebook, a notebook on the silver monkey, one book on physiology and one book on sociology. It would do for now. 

He placed the books into the cargo locker of his Fist Rocket and went back for the hard drive. The data seemed to be cleaned and usable, and he was glad about that. He detached the cable and screwed the console’s side panel back on. He’d be back soon, but this would do for now.

He wrapped up the hard drive in a protective layer and put it on top of the books before closing the locker. It clicked shut. He let out a long breath as he latched himself in and powered up his ship. “Fist Rocket 4, go,” he said automatically as the status screens came alive. The blue Fist Rocket lifted off and turned back toward Shuggazoom City and the rest of the Hyperforce.

* * *

_ Shwoosh. _

Chiro’s head popped up from behind his pod-chair as the blue tube landed. “Hey, Gibson! Glad you made it back. You were gone forever and we were about to call you and see if you were all right.”

Gibson plopped the stack of books down on the nearest pod-chair. “Well, as you know, Chiro, as we discussed earlier today, the computer in the Alchemist’s lab has not been well-maintained and is in quite rough shape. Because of that, the copying of the data took quite some time.”

“But you got it?”

Gibson sighed and smiled a little at the boy. “Yes, Chiro, I got it.”

The boy’s face split into an excited grin and Gibson’s heart tore at the innocence of it. Chiro could never know what he’d found. He’d be heartbroken, plain and simple, and the blue Monkey didn’t want that. Chiro already had borne far too much on his far too young shoulders. He couldn’t stand to add to it.

Another tube hissed and landed and Gibson turned his head. “Oh, Sparx, just in time.” He picked up the stack of books again and dropped them unceremoniously into the red Monkey’s arms. “Make yourself useful. Take these up and drop them on the desk in my room, will you?”

Sparx readjusted his grip and glared at Gibson over the stack. “Nice to see you, too.” He turned, tail flicking with annoyance, and took his tube back upwards to bedroom level.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Chiro asked. “Anything about your powers, or your weapons, or… or… oh! Baby pictures!” His eyes went wide and wavering and he pressed his hands to his cheeks. “Did you find any baby pictures of yourselves?”

Gibson snorted. “Chiro, you saw us as babies in that odd nightmare that Skeleton King sent us. That dream sequence where the Alchemist showed us in all our stages of development.” Although, now that he thought about it, there had been things lacking in that flashback, and that made his blood run cold. Why had they not seen their… their twins? They had seen everything else they’d been made to forget. Why not them?

“Yeah, I know.” Chiro’s voice broke through his fog. “I was just wondering.”

Gibson shook his head to dislodge his anxious questions. Now was not the right time. He looked up at the boy. “Oh, it’s all right, Chiro. To be quite honest I did not look through all the data folders, as there were far too many of them. Once I recopy the data over to the database and organize it, we can look and see if there is anything you would be interested in, all right?”

Chiro nodded in agreement. “Sounds good.”

Gibson went to go get the hard drive and plugged it into the big monitor in his laboratory. The screen turned on and its bright blue glow washed over his blue fur. He pursed his lips and began meticulously organizing the folders. 

Development: physical, social, mental. Weapons: schematics organized by monkey. Powers and skills: their projected abilities. Many, many other schematics and plans and projections for each one of them, including Delphei, Natsu, and Lucy.

He ground his teeth and painstakingly separated the data for the three of them from the rest. Names, identities, projected powers and abilities, all images and references to the three lost monkeys, along with the nine video logs he had found—all that he put in one folder and locked it with a passcode. That data would not be copied over to the Super Robot’s computer database; it would not leave the hard drive, but he wanted the extra layer of protection.

Feeling a little more secure, he left the lab to find something to eat. He hadn’t eaten all day and he was starting to feel quite hungry. He made his way up to the kitchen to find some food and instead found Nova walking down the hall toward him.

She waved. “Hey, Gibson!” She grinned at him and patted him on the shoulder. “How’d it go? We thought something had happened to you, you were gone so  _ long _ .”

Gibson froze.  _ Nova. _ The information he’d found sliced through his mind with cold precision. Nova was his sister. And not only his sister, but his twin. His fraternal twin. He had never known that, all these years… these many,  _ many _ years. He should have done more to help her, protect her, aid her! 

The rational part of his brain retaliated acidly that Nova was literally the most capable fighter on the team and she didn’t need protection. He acknowledged that fact numbly. But he should have still done more for her. His heart pounded against his ribs. 

He’d known Nova his whole life, had been by her side in more battles than he could count. He was her teammate, and he considered himself her friend. But now he was her brother, too, and that completely changed their relationship dynamic in a way he didn’t quite know how to articulate. How was he supposed to treat her now?

Nova waved her hand in front of the blue Monkey’s eyes. “Gibson. Shuggazoom to Gibson.” He seemed to be completely zoned out, which was weird for him. His white pupils were shrunk to pinpoints, and if she didn’t know better, she would think that he was scared of something. “ _ Gibson _ . Geez. You in there?”

Gibson started and shook his head. He looked over at her, brows creased, but pupils at their normal size once more. “Oh! No, Nova, I’m quite all right. I apologize.” He took a deep breath and smiled, but Nova noticed that the smile was tense and fragile, like porcelain that would break if you handled it roughly. “My mission was successful. I did find quite a lot of useful information, and perhaps tomorrow I will see about copying it over to the Super Robot’s computer.”

Nova put her hand on her hip. “That’s good to hear. Hey, what was up with those extra names you said you didn’t know? Did you ever find out who they were for?”

Gibson’s brow wrinkled again but he waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, nothing to worry about. I misread the data. They weren’t names after all.”

Nova pursed her lips. Gibson was methodical and extremely observant, and she was pretty sure that she knew him well enough to say that  _ he never misread data. _ Her internal red flags flared up but she ignored them for now and merely nodded. “Oh, okay.” She punched him lightly in the arm. “Go eat something, okay? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

_ Not because of the reason you think, _ Gibson thought faintly.

* * *

He ate a plate of food without really tasting it and went back downstairs. The rest of the evening was taken up by one of Nova’s enthusiastic round-robin style training tournaments. It was not one of their usual training activities, but one Chiro had come up with. Nova had indulged him by including it in their training rotation, but it had turned out to be a fun, if time-consuming, game. They’d done it a half-dozen times or so when they wanted something a little more competitive. Nova and Antauri were the usual victors. 

Gibson usually prided himself on out-strategizing his teammates, and almost never found himself in the bottom of the bracket. But today he was distracted, mind far away from the competition he should be focusing on, and he lost every single one of his matches and was benched to watch the rest of them hash it out.

Chiro glanced at the blue Monkey worriedly. It was incredibly unlike Gibson to be so distracted that he couldn’t fight well. This was very bad. He inquired and Gibson brushed him off, citing his long day at the Alchemist’s lab. Chiro filed that away, still unconvinced, but Nova yelled that it was his turn again and he stood up and left the blue Monkey to his thoughts.

It was over soon enough (Chiro won, to everyone’s surprise) and the team padded off to bed, stretching and groaning and buffing out the marks in their transformers. Gibson curled up in his charger, tail wrapped around his leg, and put his face in his hands. It was just the shock of it all that had him rattled, he rationalized. Once his mind had time to fully process it, he would be able to go back to his normal routine. Nothing was different.

The blue Monkey did not sleep well that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's curious, the name of Antauri's twin, Delphei, is a parallel to Antauri's name! Just as Antauri is a portmanteau of "Alpha Centauri" so Delphei's is a portmanteau of "Delta Celphei!" I thought it would be appropriate for them as twins to both have star names!


	2. Chapter 2

It was 5 am.

_ “Logdate 071651. Morning,"  _ said the image of the Alchemist on his screen. _  
_

Why was he doing this to himself? Why was he forcing himself to watch the logs?

He curled up tighter on the chair and forced himself to pay attention. Because it was the same as it had been at the lab. His craving for knowledge was at war with his emotional response. He’d decided he needed to know the information, never mind how terrible, how cruel, how unnerving that information was.

And so he was here.

He watched the remaining six logs, legs curled up to his chest and tail wrapped around his body. Event after event unfurled, detailing their progress in their journey to become robot monkeys. Delphei’s fate was revealed, as was Lucy’s. As Gibson suspected, they both passed away from complications during the building process. The Alchemist spoke of every detail with care, and he was not unemotional at the fate of his little monkeys. The recordings went on, and the last one wrapped up with a wish, a prayer for the remaining robot monkeys, for them to do well to protect Shuggazoom.

Gibson turned off the computer, pressed his hands to his lenses, and just sat alone for a very long time, heart pounding against his ribs like it wanted to escape. He wasn’t even sure why, whether it was fear or anger or only the overwhelming grief. He felt shame, too, mixed in with the other swirling emotions. Shame at having lived. 

Every other Robot Monkey had lost a sibling, and yet he was still alive. There was nothing, strictly biologically speaking, different about him than the others. There were cosmetic differences, yes, fur color was the most obvious. But deeper, down to the DNA level, he was only a monkey. He was only a monkey, no different than those who had died, and yet he somehow lived. He had survived and thrived and the cold agony of that coated his spine and settled in his throat.

(He would never consider the reverse–if Nova had been the one of their pair to die. She was far too valuable to their team, and even considering a time when she would not be alive felt far too much like betrayal. And he could never betray Nova.)

He sat alone in his lab, cold terror, shame, and confusion swirling a dark cocktail in his heart, and just sobbed hoarsely until the rest of the team woke up.

* * *

_ ~much later that same day~ _

“Hey, Gibson, hand me those wire strippers, will ya?” Otto said, hand grasping at air. He was on his side under the console, checking the wiring.

Gibson shook his head, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Goodness, Otto.” He reached over for the tool lying on the floor just out of the green Monkey’s reach and froze.

There was a brand-new Monkey he’d never seen before, sitting on top of the console with their legs crossed. Their mouth was moving but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They seemed to be talking to Otto.  _ Oh. Oh no.  _ He recognized the fur. Lime green. Lucy. Her cotton-candy-pink lenses shone with mirth as she laughed, her tail flailing and her legs kicking. She leaned over Otto and patted him on the shoulder, eyes closed and smiling. Gibson’s heart turned to ice.

“Gibson. Gibson!”

Otto’s voice filtered into his antenna and the blue Monkey blinked hard. Lucy disappeared. Otto sat up and grabbed the tool himself, giving Gibson a slightly annoyed look. “If you had your hands full and you couldn't grab it, just say so next time, okay?”

Gibson shakily focused on the green Monkey’s face, but if Otto noticed his distress, he chose to not say anything, instead going back to his work. Gibson swallowed and rubbed his temples. Great scott, what did he just see? A spirit? No, that was absurd.  _ But Antauri, _ his mind reminded him. He shook his head. Still, no. It didn’t make sense. He did not have any sort of spiritual abilities. Perhaps his exhaustion was getting to him. That was possible. He resolved to take a quick nap after patrol to recharge his systems.

* * *

_ ~the next morning~ _

Sparx poked his head into Gibson’s lab. “Hey, Brainiac, Chiro’s meeting starts in 3. You coming?”

Gibson sat up with a start, papers wrinkling under his hands. “Yes!” he said a little louder than he meant to.

Sparx raised a brow.

Gibson cleared his throat. “Yes, I am on my way. One moment.”

Sparx shrugged, then nodded in acknowledgement, retreating back out into the bright light of the main room.

Gibson rolled his shoulders and sighed.

Two minutes later, he was sitting cross-legged in his pod-chair, waiting for Chiro to start. The boy walked up in front of the monitor and opened the cover, pulling up his presentation that he’d worked on with Antauri.

“Okay, team, I’ve been working on an easier way to subdivide up the sectors of the city for patrol,” the boy began. “So right now we have sections 1 through 20.” He pointed at a neatly drafted simple city map. “The city’s actual sectors are City Center, Shopping District, Industrial District, and Residential District. 20 into 4 is 5, so 5 sections per sector.” He pressed a button and the map divided as he’d just explained. “Here…”

Gibson was listening, he really was. This was important, anything that made their patrols more efficient was highly needed in his opinion. But in the lull between two of Chiro’s sentences, he looked down at his lap, at his hand drumming on his thigh… and when he raised his chin again to resume his focus on the boy, his eyes went wide.

There was a violet monkey standing at the console alongside Chiro. They tilted their head, listening attentively as he spoke, then began to speak themselves when he took a breath and switched to a new slide. Gibson couldn’t hear a voice, but again, he knew the fur. Apparently Lucy had not been an isolated incident. Violet fur. Delphei.

Sparx raised his hand. “Kid, this is good, but it’s gonna be really confusing for us to remember these new divisions, we’ve had the old ones for forever.”

Delphei nodded and pointed at the red monkey.

Chiro put his chin in his hand. “Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s just a suggestion. We patrol once or twice a day, two of us, so even if we each check three or four sectors apiece per patrol, it’ll be hard to cover the whole city. That’s why I’m just trying to subdivide it down to make it easier. It’s up to you guys.”

Delphei seemed to consider Chiro’s statement, pursing his lips and rubbing his chin. After a second he nodded and sat down in the black pod-chair. He looked over at Antauri, who was sitting in mid-air somewhere up and to the right of it, and smiled.

Gibson’s whole body was frozen. No one else was seeing this? And if they were, why weren’t they saying anything? Had he slipped somehow into an alternate timestream, where these monkeys were still alive? This was insane. For Lucy, he could wave it off as exhaustion playing with his mind, but this? It was still early, he’d only woken up a couple of hours ago. How was… how was this possible?

“—bson. Gibson.” He snapped his gaze back onto the boy’s face. He was being spoken to. “Gibson.” Chiro said again. “You got any good ideas to help fix this?”

Gibson opened his mouth. “…ah hah.” His eyes flicked over to the black chair where Delphei had been a moment before. Empty.

Chiro put the remote down. “Gibson, are you feeling okay? You look terrible.” Gibson’s eyes were wide and his pupils were shrunk to points. His hands were shaking and sweat was dripping off his brow. He was either abjectly terrified, which was uncharacteristic if not impossible for Gibson, or he was going to be sick. Chiro didn’t like either of those options.

Gibson squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head hard. “No! Chiro, I am fine. Thank you for your concern, but it is not warranted.”

Chiro was incredibly unconvinced by that, but Gibson seemed to be calmer and his eyes were back to normal. “Oh-kay.” He directed his original question to Antauri instead.

Gibson pressed his hands together. Seeing one monkey was an isolated incident. Seeing a second monkey was coincidence. He didn’t want to know what it would mean if he saw the third.

* * *

_ ~two days later~ _

“Hey, Gibson, both your wings in good shape?” Sparx called. He was sitting on one of the wings of his red Fist Rocket, buffing out some dents it had sustained in their latest skirmish. In Machinder Mode the wings weren’t visible, but he wanted to make sure they were well maintained anyway, just in case they needed to fly.

Gibson sighed. “Yes, Sparx, both my wings are fine.” The two of them had taken their Fist Rockets down from the Robot’s wrists and set them side by side in the area behind the docking pad. Since both vehicles were the same type, both often had similar issues and it was often quicker to do maintenance at the same time so the issues could be addressed accordingly.

“Just making sure.” Sparx stood up and tossed his buffing pad down into the bucket on the ground. “Geez.” He jumped back down to the ground and opened the hatch to the cockpit. “I’ll be in here if you need anything, okay, Braniac?”

“Thank you, Sparx,” Gibson acknowledged, not looking up from the welding he was working on.

After a few minutes, the welding was complete, and Gibson put his welding mask away. He let out a long sigh and went to check his own dashboard. He went through all the usual checks—screen quality, no cracks or problems with the images, along with the mechanical checks of his levers. He pulled at one of his levers, his left foot lever, but it seemed to be jammed. He checked the joints of it, then the connection to the dashboard, but they seemed to both be normal. He went through all the mechanical checks again, and the lever was still jammed. He groaned and went to go see if Sparx was having a similar issue.

He poked his head inside the red cockpit and sighed. As much as he really hated to ask for Sparx’s help, the issue would be solved considerably quicker if the red Monkey had a solution. He looked up to find said red Monkey and nearly choked on his tongue.

Sitting next to the red Monkey was another Robot Monkey with maroon-colored fur. Gibson knew, just as he had known the other two. Natsu.

Natsu chuckled good-naturedly and elbowed his brother in the ribs as Sparx dug inside his console. He seemed to be helping Sparx with the maintenance, pressing the test buttons while Sparx rewired the burnt-out connections.

Gibson’s heart shot up into his throat. The third monkey. He was here, in front of him. Gibson wondered dizzily for half a second why he was seeing Natsu as a fully built Robot Monkey when he had never gotten a chance to be completed.

Sparx crawled out from under his dashboard and Natsu laughed again, punching him in the shoulder excitedly. He pumped his fist and whooped, though Gibson couldn’t hear the sound.

Sparx sat up and turned his head and noticed Gibson standing there. “Gibson! Don’t sneak up on me like that. Whaddaya want? You having trouble?”

Gibson wrenched his attention over to the red Monkey. “What?”

Sparx stood up, leaned on the console, and raised a brow. “Did you need something or…?”

Gibson blinked hard and looked again. Natsu had disappeared. Disconcerting. “Um. Well… yes…?”

Sparx groaned and stepped out of his cockpit, maneuvering around the blue Monkey. Gibson was their smart guy. Why on Shuggazoom was he acting like a space case? He'd grown used to this kind of thing from Otto, especially when he had his full attention on whatever he was working on, but Gibson? He shook his head and stuck his head inside Gibson’s blue cockpit. “Okay, Braniac, what gives?”

Gibson scampered after him. “The bottom left lever is considerably jammed, even though I have checked all the joints and connections, and I thought you might have a solution…”

“Lemme look.” Sparx knelt down and pulled at the lever. He pursed his lips when it resisted his touch. “Huh.”

As Sparx worked on unsticking his controls, Gibson leaned against the wall and put his forehead in his hand. So he’d seen Natsu as well. He’d seen all three of the… the dead monkeys. He still didn’t know what that meant. None of them seemed to notice that he was there, and no one else seemed to notice them. He considered for a moment that he might be hallucinating. That seemed vaguely plausible, though the explanation for that hypothesis eluded him. Why? Why? Why? To see phantoms, spirits, souls long passed… it was incredibly troublesome.

But then again, his soul was troubled, too.

* * *

_ ~the next night~ _

“Anybody else notice that Gibson’s kinda losing his mind?” Sparx noted offhandedly. “I mean, he’s been acting really weird, even for him.” He moved his hands as Otto welded the corner of the two metal pieces together. “When we were doing our Fist Rocket maintenance yesterday he was acting super spacey.”

Otto finished the weld and put his welding goggles away. “Yeah. What’s up with that? He’s been kinda jumpy lately. And I said hi to him this morning when I went to grab something to drink and he looked at me like I was a ghost! Somethin’s wrong.”

Nova slid the brackets back into the wall, Lady Tomahawks snapping the repaired metal back into place. “Yeah. It is weird. You guys saw what happened at Chiro’s meeting the other day, right? He was all sweaty and he looked so scared. You’re right, Otto, he always looks like he’s seeing a ghost.” She turned back and looked at the green and red Monkeys. “That’s not normal. I’m worried about him.”

Sparx rubbed his chin. “I’ve been thinking. He only started acting like this after he got back from the lab last week.”

“So… do you think he found something weird there?” Otto asked. “Somethin’ that freaked him out?”

Nova leaned on the wall and folded her arms, tapping one white foot on the floor. “Even if Gibson saw something out there that worried him, he wouldn’t still be upset about it, right? It’s been, like, almost a week.”

“He’s really freaked out. Still. It must be something really  _ not good _ ,” Sparx noted, an undertone of worry creeping into his voice.

“We gotta find out what it is,” Otto said, his brow furrowing. “He copied all the data he got from the Alchemist’s computer onto a hard drive.”

“It’s gotta be on that drive,” Sparx said. “It’s gotta be.”

“Otto, he still has that drive, right?” Nova asked. Her conscience pricked. She couldn’t be about to do what she thought she was going to do, right?

“Far as I know, it’s in his lab. He was organizin’ the data on his monitor he’s got in there,” Otto replied, crossing his legs and finally letting the metal in his hands drop to the floor.

Nova nodded. “I’ll get it, and then we’ll see what’s really going on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the shorter chapter! In my original document this chapter and the next one were together, but I felt it dragged on too long so I split it here. Also sorry for the cliffhanger (but not really :) Next week you guys finally get to find out how Sparx, Nova, Otto, and Antauri react to finding out what Gibson already knows!
> 
> Edit: Since a bunch of you are curious as to why Gibson is seeing the dead twins, I'll tell you, since it's not a spoiler. My intention that the reason Gibson can see the dead monkeys is 50% he's hallucinating because he's so traumatized by the information about the twins, and 50% the Power Primate giving him visions about what it might have been like if they had lived. So you can mostly blame the Power Primate for tapping into Gibson's trauma and showing him the visions of the dead twins!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where the Alchemist talks about the robot monkey building process, which of course includes the descriptions of the surgeries the monkeys went through... I don't describe it, like, in _incredible_ amounts of detail, but it happens, and here's your warning again for it.
> 
> High emotions incoming, the rest of the Monkeys finally find out what Gibson's been keeping from them... and they have very intense reactions.

Nova couldn’t believe she was stealing from Gibson.

_ It’s not stealing, _ she rationalized.  _ If you take it and put it back right where you found it it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing. _

A thrill of guilt still pricked in her chest as she quietly snagged the hard drive off of Gibson’s desk. For a moment she wondered if this one was the right one, and she looked around for any others.  _ No, _ she figured after a moment.  _ We don’t have any other portable extra drives. There’s only this one. This is the one Otto gave him, the one he brought to the lab. This has to be it. _

She crept back out of the lab and quietly tiptoed over to the main console. Otto and Sparx were already there. She bit her lip as she handed the hard drive to the green Monkey. It was midnight, and everyone was asleep. The fact that they were doing this at midnight when everyone else was asleep should have let her know they were probably doing something wrong. She shook her head and steeled her resolve. This was for Gibson’s own good. They were going to find out what was freaking him out and fix it so things could get back to normal.

Otto hummed nervously as he plugged the hard drive into the main console. The monitor lit up with a faint click and one folder popped up onto the screen.

Nova let out a relieved breath.

Then another folder popped up, then one next to it, then more and more until there were at least a couple dozen pale yellow icons filling the screen.

Otto clicked on one and checked the size of it. “Holy Shuggazoom. If they’re all this big, he’s got at least four terabytes of data on here.”

“It’s going to take forever to go through all of this,” Nova groaned, putting her hand to her forehead. “How’re we going to find the exact thing we want? And how are we going to know it’s the right thing?”

Sparx tapped his chin and scanned the monitor thoughtfully. After a long moment he tapped Nova’s shoulder and pointed. “Hey, check that out.”

There was a lone folder up in the very top right corner away from most of the others. Maybe it was just a special organization method, something to be kept separate. Not too suspicious. But the folder had a little blue lock on it, and a shiver crawled up Nova’s spine. That was it.

Otto gingerly clicked on the locked folder and true enough it was locked with a six-digit passcode. He looked at Nova out of the corner of his eye. “You know… maybe we should just leave it after all. It’s probably nothin', I mean…” His voice trailed off, cool worry coursing through his veins. The light of the screen washed over his fur, making it ghostly pale.

Nova shook her head. “No. We’ve gotta help Gibson. Whatever it is, whatever’s making him… act like this, we have to find it.”

Otto took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He cracked his knuckles and very deliberately began working on hacking the passcode. Sparx and Nova stood waiting, both their tails flicking anxiously. They looked at each other, and neither found any degree of reassurance in the other’s expression. They both had a weird cold feeling deep in their bones, and they were almost afraid to find out why.

After an agonizingly slow few minutes, Otto got the folder open, and the three Monkeys crowded around. More folders. Tons of documents. Lists of milestones. Stats for weapons. Analyses of powers. Body scans. Detailed projections and notes. Everything they would have expected to find on the computer of the man who had made them.

But there was one thing that was different.

None of these documents were for them. They were for three monkeys whose names they did not recognize. 

Another cold shock ran up Nova’s spine and settled at the base of her skull.  _ Records of other monkeys the Alchemist was raising, _ she remembered Gibson telling her.  _ Unfamiliar names. _ The cold feeling in her bones turned to ice.

“What… what’s all this?” Sparx ventured at last. “I don’t recognize any of these guys.”

“I… I don’t know…” Nova said softly, brow creasing as she skimmed over the data.  _ More monkeys? _ She put her hand over her stomach again, remembering Gibson’s question. It couldn’t be true… could it?

Otto found a group of videos at the bottom of the folder. “Here, look. The Alchemist made… made recordings. Maybe he’ll be able to tell us what all this stuff’s about.”

Sparx put both his hands on the console and looked up at the screen, brow furrowed with determination. “Yeah. Okay. Pull it up, Otto.”

Otto clicked open the first video in the playlist and the Alchemist’s face appeared. All three of them looked up at him, wondering apprehensively about what he was about to explain.

The Alchemist began to explain about the monkeys that would enter into the Robot Monkey Project. There were nine, he said, one singleton and four pairs of twins. The three Monkeys looked at each other, horrified. There were only five of them, six if Mandarin was counted.

But a selfish relief rushed hot through Nova’s veins, as if to combat the icy horror. She wasn’t a mother. Those names did not belong to her children.

The Alchemist went on to speak of the twins in a bit more detail, and visuals of differently colored monkeys popped up on the screen. 

Orange. 

Black, with purple. 

Pink, with dark red. Sparx turned deathly pale as a photograph he recognized as himself popped up next to a monkey with deep maroon fur. 

Yellow with blue. Nova clenched her hands to her chest. 

And medium green with bright lime green. Otto pressed his hands to the console, eyes as wide as plates. That was him, right there, he recognized himself. But crouched there next to him, leaning into his shoulder with sweet familiarity, was another monkey.

_ “Each of them carries so much potential. I pray that all of them will survive the process that I am about to begin… but I fear not all of them are suited for it.” _

Cold fear turned to ice turned to stone. That couldn’t be right. This was all wrong. They’d seen themselves in their nightmare, they’d seen themselves as babies. And there had been six of them. There had only ever been six of them.

This wasn’t  _ possible _ .

Otto shakily tapped the  _ next _ key before either the red or yellow Monkey could work up a word of protest.

The second log showed the Alchemist once more, and it seemed to Otto that he might have been crying. He’d been giving them injections to reinforce them, he said. To continue to strengthen their bodies for their upcoming procedures. But one monkey did not take them well.

Sparx turned impossibly paler, and his pupils shrunk to points.  _ No. Not that one. _ Natsu. He got sick from the injections. Sparx’s hands shook at his sides as he watched the video. None of this was possible. He’d had… he’d had a  _ brother _ ? And not just a brother, but a  _ twin? _ How could he not know that, how could he not remember?

Otto clicked open the next log almost automatically.

The first thing that Sparx heard was  _ Natsu passed away _ and his body reacted forcefully to that statement. Before he could even really process that information he found himself crumpled to the floor on elbows and knees, trying valiantly to not heave up his dinner.  _ No. No. _ His brother. His twin.  _ No. No! No! _

More of the Alchemist’s words filtered into his brain slowly. … _ I had him safe in my arms, with his brother holding his hand, as he breathed his last… Sparx is furious and in that fury he bit me… _

_ Serves him right, _ he thought dizzily, taking a tiny bit of satisfaction in the fact that past him had gotten a little bit of revenge.

He didn’t hear any of the rest of the log. His brother was dead? His brother had died and he’d been there with him? He’d held his brother’s hand as he died, and he didn’t remember that? This couldn’t be real. There was no way this was real. But deep in his heart, deep in his bones, he knew. There was a bit of him missing, a little hollow carved out in the recesses of his soul that was empty. A part that had once belonged to his twin brother.

Nova put her hand on his back. “Sparx… are you…?” she whispered gently.

He shook her off violently. “Get away!” he snapped, shoulders heaving. He was vibrating with anger, furious at the man who had… had… had  _ killed _ his brother. Sorrow cropped up next to the anger, and before he could even attempt to stem any of those emotions, he was sobbing with tears overflowing fast and thick. He was a heaving, shaking, weeping mess, and for once he didn’t care if anyone saw his emotions. This was unreal and terrifying and he felt betrayed to the deepest parts of his soul.

_ Wsssh. Wsssh. _

Otto turned his head. Two of the travel tubes had landed on the main floor, and out of them… oh, no. Gibson and Antauri. Antauri’s expression was quizzical but concerned… but Gibson’s was equal parts anger and terror.

“Otto!” he growled. His gaze flicked up to the screen. They were watching the logs. _Oh, Shuggazoom,_ _no, no, no!_

The green Monkey instinctively retreated a step, putting up his hands in a pathetic attempt to shield himself from the words he knew were coming.

Gibson knew his next words were going to be unusually harsh, but the fear of the rest of the team watching the logs far outweighed his need to be kind. “Otto, did you hack my passcode? How could you do that? There’s a reason they were locked!”

Sparx’s head shot up and he locked eyes with the blue Monkey, and this time it was Gibson’s turn to back up a step. Every facet of the red Monkey’s face was outlined with pure, unfiltered fury. “Oh, right, the reason you didn’t care to share with the rest of us,” he growled, lips curled back to reveal his fangs. “All this info on our siblings. You kept it to yourself, because we didn’t deserve to know. Right?!?”

“Siblings?” Antauri queried. No answer came.

Gibson’s hands trembled, but he gripped them into fists and brought them down fast. “I… I didn’t want to cause you any pain… so I did keep it to myself,” he answered in a deathly quiet tone. “I couldn’t…” his chest heaved “…it hurt me to watch the logs.” He looked up and met Sparx’s eyes one more time. “I do understand… Sparx, I felt it too, all that fear and anger—”

“NO!” Sparx shouted, eyes slitted to angry slices. “No, you could never understand! You could never understand because  _ your sister LIVED! _ ”

He jumped up from the floor and rushed at Gibson, and the blue Monkey made no move to open his weapons or protect himself. Sparx grabbed him by the shoulders, hackles raised, and growled angrily deep in his throat. There was a standoff for a long moment, the other three Monkeys in the room watching with thinly veiled horror. Antauri held out a hand, in a battle stance, as if to telekinetically pry them apart, but it wasn’t needed. Sparx shoved Gibson away from him as hard as he could and the blue Monkey dropped to the floor. Nova rushed to his side. The red Monkey stood trembling with fury for another instant before stalking over to the other side of the room and plopping himself down in his red pod-chair. He rotated the chair around so he couldn’t see the others and folded his arms around himself.

There was dead quiet in the room for long minutes. Gibson sat up at last, rubbing his shoulders, and Nova helped him stand, supporting him gently.

“What is going on?” Antauri asked in a far calmer tone than anyone expected from him.

Otto shook his head and crossed his arms, brow furrowing deeply.

Nova pressed her lips together and shook her head as well.

Gibson sighed. “When I was looking through the data in the Alchemist’s computer, I found records of unfamiliar monkeys. It seems to be that each one of us was born a twin, save Mandarin. The Alchemist began the Robot Monkey Project with nine monkeys. Seven males and two females.”

Antauri felt a distinct chill wind through his circuits. Began with nine. Ended with six. It couldn’t be. “And…?”

It was Gibson’s turn to shake his head mutely, shoulders still trembling. Nova still had her hand pressed gently between his shoulder blades, but even that comforting touch did nothing to stem the agony in his soul.

Now Otto. Otto was a curious monkey. He’d always been one of the most curious of all of them. You didn’t teach yourself any degree of mechanical engineering without taking quite a few things apart to see how they worked. And now he was curious about his twin, his sister, that sweet monkey with the bright green fur. He wanted to know more about her. He wasn’t dumb, he knew what probably was going to happen, despite all his hopes to the contrary… but he wanted to know.

So he pressed play.

_ “Logdate 071651. Morning. Very early morning.”  _ The Alchemist chuckled.

All four heads shot up to the monitor, and all their eyes went wide.

_ “My monkeys are all still asleep, and so I thought I would record today’s log before the day begins. Yesterday I performed the ancient alchemical rituals necessary to reinforce their skeletal systems.” _ A diagram popped up on the screen, showing a cross-section of an arm showing the bone.  _ “I was forced to draw upon my magical prowess for this step, as literally replacing every bone with the reinforcing alloy would be time consuming for me and immensely painful for my little monkeys. This way, I could fuse the two together, the bone and the metal—” _ the diagram changed, and within the web of the bone structure they could see that there were tendrils of metal being interwoven  _ “—and the fusion would be true. Of course, the reason for the fusion is so that their bodies will be able to bear the strain of their upcoming metal parts. I created the alloy myself and made it as light as possible so as to not strain them unnecessarily, but it will still be heavier than their organic parts. Hence the reinforcement.” _

Otto looked at his feet and wiggled his toes.  _ Oh. _ Metal  _ was _ heavy, so it made sense that the Alchemist would have to reinforce their bones so they could carry the weight of their big metal helmets. And their weapons weren’t really that light, except for his. His saws were energy saws, and Antauri’s claws were also made of energy so they didn’t weigh much of anything, but he knew Sparx’s magnets weren’t light, and Gibson’s drills could get pretty heavy, and Nova’s fists were the heaviest of all! 

The Alchemist’s mouth twisted but the corner of his mouth turned up. “ _ The reason I have let them sleep is that the ritual for the bone fusion was exhausting for all involved—draining for the little bodies of the monkeys, and draining for me as I had to perform it eight times!”  _ He chuckled.  _ “But they are all doing well, and I will give them a few days to recover before their first true surgery.” _

The log ended, and Nova and Antauri looked at each other. Should they continue? Did they really want to know? All of them had the same cold feeling deep in their souls that there was something coming that would hurt them. Was it wrong of them to want to watch the rest?

Gibson shifted from foot to foot, sensing the tension in the room. “I know it will not help my case… but I did watch all these logs already.” He put his forehead down into his hand. “I thought I would bear the burden alone. But if the team must know…”

They could read the subtext. Since they came this far, they should press on, and find out the fates of their siblings. It wasn’t fair for Gibson to be alone in his knowledge. Nova tangled her tail around his arm as Otto opened the fifth video.

_ “Logdate 071951. Evening.”  _ The Alchemist smiled tiredly, and they all noted the rings under his eyes.  _ “Today was an exhausting day, but it is done. All the removal surgeries for all eight of the monkeys have been completed.” _

_ Removal surgeries! _

The Alchemist took a deep breath and folded his hands together.  _ “I have planned this for years, have plotted out every step of this process, and it still broke my heart to bring a surgical knife upon any of my little monkeys. But it was necessary.”  _ His fingers trembled a little bit but he looked at the camera with determination. “ _ I removed their arms from the shoulder socket down, removed about eight inches at the end of their tails, and removed their ears and part of their skulls. The last one was the most difficult and frankly frightening part for me. All the cellular modifications I made, all the reinforcing steroids, all the magic I poured into them, all the energy of the Power Primate that was used to uphold their life forces through this process, it was all so they would survive. And I thank the Being and any other benevolent force that they all lived.” _

They’d known they were not whole. Their antennae, their transformers, many of their body parts bore witness to their cyborg identity. But hearing about it firsthand, to know what parts of themselves had been removed to make way for metal… it was an unsettling experience.

Nova folded her arms tight against her chest, for the first time feeling just how cold, how hard, how unforgiving her metal parts were. Otto looked at his hands, front and back, and opened and closed his saws. Maybe they weren’t his original hands, but they were just as good. Better, even, because they came with useful weapons. Antauri folded his hands and watched silently. This no longer applied to him. His organic original body was long lost, and he now inhabited a fully robotic silver body. He would never be ungrateful to be able to continue living… but he did miss his old body. And these recordings tore at the edges of that scar just a little.

The Alchemist pressed a hand to his forehead. “ _ They are currently in stasis to recover, as I felt it was unfair for them to try and operate properly with half their limbs missing. Their heads I have temporarily covered with special caps that should do for now, until they are ready for their helmets and antennae. They will remain in their healing tubes for a few days. That is the best kindness I can do for them while they heal.” _

In spite of having to put them through a cruel process, Nova recognized that he’d done everything he could to make sure they were comfortable through it all. He’d let them sleep off their healing process instead of forcing them to try and function through it. Her brow wrinkled and she looked worriedly up at the monitor. Oh, the Alchemist. He was struggling, she knew, battling against the darkness eating him alive. And yet he was such a kind soul, making sure they were happy and secure, the best he knew how. Her heart thudded achingly in her chest.

Otto looked back at Antauri and the silver Monkey gave a very slight nod. He turned back toward the console and opened the next log.

_ “Logdate 072251. Night.”  _ The Alchemist turned toward the camera slowly.  _ “The second round of surgeries have been completed. I have given them vocoders, little devices that should enhance their ability to speak clearly and be understood well. In addition, their metal tail tips and round metal shoulders were grafted in as well. The tail tips were quite easy, merely connecting the metal with the bone and flesh. The shoulders were troublesome.”  _ The Alchemist shook his head.  _ “Troublesome, because they are indeed joints, but it was successful. I did implant a graft into the sockets of their shoulders, so if their arms should for any reason need removal or replacement, up to and including the circular shoulders themselves, it will be able to be done. Additionally, I connected the shoulders themselves with about four inches of arm attached. It will take some practice and getting used to while the implants heal, so I have not yet attached the transformers. That will come later.” _

Otto rolled his shoulders instinctively. The Alchemist was right, they did have the ability to fully remove their shoulders to replace them. That had happened only once or twice to his knowledge. The only one he could remember off the top of his head was that time on the mining colony where the Sun Riders lived. Antauri’d gotten really banged up and Otto had had to replace his entire arm. Among a ton of other repairs. That had been a rough day.

The Alchemist put his hand together under the folds of his cuffs and sighed deeply from his chest. _ “Unfortunately, there was one great blight on an otherwise positive day.” _ His mouth twisted and his breath hitched. _ “Delphei… Delphei’s shoulder grafts did not attach well. It puzzled me, as his brother’s were perfect, as were all the others, but Delphei’s refused to attach. His wounds reopened, and he bled profusely.” _

“Delphei…” Antauri found himself whispering.

Gibson looked out of the corner of his eye, but the yellow and green Monkeys were not so discreet. They whipped their heads around to look at Antauri. Otto noted with a tiny spark of relief that Antauri’s lenses were still alight, which meant he was still online. But he was frozen in place, still as a statue. Nova moved to his side and put her hand on his shoulder and he moved not one millimeter.

A sob caught in the Alchemist’s throat. “ _ I did everything I could, up to and including placing him back in his stasis tube in an attempt to stall the bleeding, but nothing worked. His vitals dropped lower and lower, and he continued to lose more and more blood.” _ He inhaled and choked again.  _ “Antauri looked up at me and tried to say something that I didn’t quite understand, but it was about Delphei. The look in his eyes was so worried, but so calm despite my franticness.” _

They were looking at him, gauging his reaction. Antauri didn’t know what to do. The Verons had taught him that calmness and rationality in the face of his problems would serve him well. But this was beyond all rationality. There was so much about all of this that didn’t make any sense. 

When he’d awakened Gibson, told him he was sensing something greatly disturbing from the rest of the team, Gibson had become quite pale. He’d thought something was amiss, but he never would have suspected that he was keeping a secret that would shatter everything they knew about themselves! They’d had siblings! They’d had brothers! They’d had another sister! He himself had had a twin! His soul wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, that his twin had suffered so! He wanted to scream, cry, fight against the utter anguish of it, but he couldn’t. He was motionless, frozen, unmoving, despite the agony in his heart.

And then the log turned even more melancholy.

_ “I worked harder, faster,” _ the Alchemist went on,  _ “I used the healing magic from my tomes, and that at last stopped the bleeding. I hooked him in for a transfusion as fast as I could, but it was no use. His heart, his body couldn’t take the strain. He lay on the table, and Antauri sat with him, comforting him, until he passed.” _

Antauri’s processors froze. No. That couldn’t be. His brother… was  _ dead? _

The Alchemist was quiet for a long moment and seemed to be gathering his thoughts. At last he let out a sigh and looked at the camera again.  _ “I am… I am troubled, distressed, and truly very angry that through this process I have lost two of my little ones. Not merely one, but two. Such bright futures, snuffed out by my hand.” _ He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.  _ “I know I did not kill them directly but it was because of the building process that they died and so I feel responsible.”  _ He looked back at the camera.  _ “I do not know if I can ever atone for what has happened… I must redouble my efforts, make the remaining monkeys perfect. Only the most important parts of the process remain. It will not be long before they are completed, and I can rest.” _

Antauri’s antennae didn’t quite catch the remainder of the Alchemist’s words. Delphei. Delphei had died. Of course he  _ knew _ that, the simple math he’d done earlier told him that along the way they were going to lose three lives. But he hadn’t thought that one of them would be… his own twin. His vision glitched, his systems stuttered, and Otto rushed to his side. “Antauri? ‘Tauri, breathe, okay?” He felt something jam into the jack in the back of his head and a soothing tingle ran through all his circuits. “Antauri, it’s all right.”

Antauri managed to turn his head a couple of degrees to see three worried faces looking back at him. They were alive, still. He hadn’t lost them. “I’m sorry,” he croaked, his throat rebelling against forming the words.

Nova shook her head and put her hand on his arm. “No, Antauri, don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry.”  _ You’re allowed to grieve. _

Antauri stood frozen for another couple of minutes while he tried to process everything that had just been imparted to him. He tried to work through it logically, maybe then he could wrap his head around it. But it remained just as torturous as ever. It went against everything he’d ever known. But it was true.

Otto went back to the computer and tapped to the next video. Maybe the next one would have something that would distract Antauri from the crisis he was having.

_ “Logdate 072451. Afternoon. As of today, all the surgeries are complete.” _ The Alchemist had his arms folded tight against his chest, and he took a deep breath to steady his voice.  _ “I attached their transformers to their shoulders, their lenses to their faces, their helmets to their heads, and their rocket packs to their backs. All went well.” _

They’d seen part of this process in their nightmare, when the Alchemist had revealed to them their memories. They’d seen their helmets be attached, their rocket packs put on, their weapons attached to their arms. This wasn’t something they hadn’t known about. It was interesting to hear about it, though, to know that it really was something they’d gone through and not only something they’d seen in their Skeleton-King-caused nightmare.

_ “They are still adjusting to the vocoders and being able to speak and be understood. Sparx was the first to speak a full sentence that I understood, and all the rest are improving quickly.” _

The green, blue, yellow, and silver Monkeys looked back at Sparx’s pod-chair which was still turned backwards. They couldn’t see him, but they knew somehow that he hadn’t left the room. He was still listening.

The corner of the Alchemist’s mouth turned up.  _ “It is peculiar, but I truly feel like a parent whose toddlers are walking and talking for the first time, even though they met those original milestones quite a long time ago. I am proud of them, and I am very excited for what they will accomplish for Shuggazoom. They are practicing with their weapons, and Mandarin is organizing and aiding them. I forbade sparring with each other, as I am too busy to deal with injuries sustained from improper weapon use, but nonetheless they are practicing with the equipment I have and are doing well.” _

Nova opened her Lady Tomahawks and looked at them, her pride and joy, her weapons she’d spent so long learning how to fight with. This was where that all began. Despite everything, despite the undercurrent of grief in the room, she felt a tiny thrill of pride.

And then, once more, the log took a turn for the somber.

The Alchemist let out a deep sigh.  _ “However, when I refer to all the monkeys… I mean all of them except Lucy. My precious Lucy developed complications from the installation of her helmet. Her meninges, the membranes covering her brain, have become very irritated, and as a result she has begun to have short, rapid seizures that I fear are doing her irreversible damage. Her twin is by her side constantly, trying to keep her calm and steady.” _

Otto inhaled a loud gasp that punctured the silence like a needle popping a balloon. Lucy? She’d gotten… gotten so sick she’d started having seizures. Her twin… the Alchemist was talking about  _ him _ . He’d been with her. He’d been the one to stay by her side when everyone else was out practicing.

The Alchemist inhaled a shaky deep breath.  _ “Her vocoder is working enough for her to be able to communicate, and she has made it known that she is afraid. She is the one always mediating between the monkeys, the one who calmed Sparx when his twin… passed away. She is bright and sweet-tempered and gentle, and I would give anything for her to not be in the pain that she is right now.” _

Otto’s bottom lip trembled.  _ No… _

He shook his head.  _ “My darling Nova is also terribly worried about her best friend, and I wish I could give her better reassurance. I am doing what I can, and her prognosis is fair. It will be all right.” _

Nova’s heart thrummed achingly in her chest. Her best friend… Lucy had been her best friend? She’d had another girl on the team with her… and they’d been best friends. And then Lucy… A deep cold ache settled around her heart.  _ Her prognosis is fair, _ the Alchemist had said. Nova would give anything right now for him to have been correct. She looked at Otto, and his shoulders were trembling, his hands pressed to his mouth. She reached over and opened the next log, because she knew he wasn’t about to do it.

_ “Logdate 072951. Morning. I put off making this log as long as I could, in hopes that I would have good news to record. Unfortunately, it was not… meant to be.” _

Otto’s heart sank all the way down to his toes and tears welled up in his eyes.

The Alchemist shook his head.  _ “Lucy died this morning, with Otto curled up at her side. He is distraught, and I think he almost wishes he could go with her, but she is in care of the Power Primate now, and whatever else lies in the life beyond.” _ A heavy sob left his body.

Otto’s tears flowed over, and he cried. His tears flowed fast down his cheek fur, over his hands that were still clasped over his mouth. His whole body trembled, and he wept. He’d seen Sparx’s anger and Antauri’s frozen shock, but that had been  _ them _ . This time it was his sister. His twin. His Lucy. She was dead. 

Broken sobs wrenched out of his throat. He’d been there, he’d done everything he could for her, been by her side, comforting her, but he… didn’t… didn’t remember it. He didn’t remember it, and he felt awful. His heart was rending in two, and that wasn’t anything he could fix. He prided himself on being able to fix anything broken, anytime, anywhere… but he couldn’t fix his own broken heart.

The Alchemist’s voice seeped into Otto’s antennae. “ _ Three. Three of my nine little monkeys. How could I have only a two-thirds success rate? I planned this process down to the cellular level! It’s… impossible!” _ He pressed his hand to his forehead for a moment and another sob wracked his thin form.  _ “And truly I do not understand why any of the three of them experienced complications that their twins did not. I also do not know why Nova and Gibson did not experience this… they are the only pair that did not. I don’t understand. Is it fate? Was I destined to fail? If I had begun with six monkeys would all of them lived? Is the… the darkness in me interfering, sabotaging? Am I to blame?” _ He had both his hands placed on the table, head bent over it, and it seemed to everyone in the room that the Alchemist was utterly heartbroken.

And then there was a tug on the Alchemist’s robe.

The Alchemist looked down.  _ “Otto, I am recording,” _ he said in a thick voice.

_ “I know,” _ said a small trembling voice.

Nova put her hand to her mouth to muffle her gasp.

The Alchemist bent down and scooped the green Robot Monkey up to his chest, and Otto threw his arms around the neck of his robe. He sobbed into the purple folds of cloth for a good few moments, and as he turned his head just a little, they could make out the rivers of tears running down his cheeks. The recording went on for perhaps twenty more seconds, and the Alchemist said nothing more, merely holding the green Monkey as he sobbed his broken heart out.

_ Weird, _ Otto thought woozily. Watching himself mourn was almost like dissociating, like having an out of body experience. Like he was experiencing it twice, twice the agony, twice the heartbreak, all just as real and full of despair as the emotions he was experiencing right now.

Then Nova had her arms around him, and Gibson had his hand on his back, and Antauri had his hand on his shoulder, and he just let himself cry. 

“We’re here, Otto,” Antauri said. “It’s all right.” He mirrored back what the green Monkey had said to him before, hoping that it would bring him some small comfort.

It was long minutes before Otto could make himself calm down, but the team didn’t rush him. They were all grieving, and they knew Otto needed to grieve in his own way. He pulled away from Nova and wiped his face with the heel of his hand, the occasional hiccup working its way out of his chest.

Nova turned toward Gibson. “Are there any more?” she asked softly, almost hoping there wouldn’t be anything else. What they’d seen was enough already.

Gibson nodded once. “Yes… one final log. A wrap-up, if you will. A conclusion to all these other recordings.”

Nova looked over at Otto, and he nodded, motioning for her to play it, and she did.

_ “Logdate 083051. Morning. I believe this will be one of my final recordings. Although every time I say that, I find that there are more events to be recorded.” _

Nova managed to crack a smile at that. The Silver Monkey recordings did follow this one, she believed. Chiro had told her about them, what he could faintly recall from his incredible trip to the Alchemist’s lab as the host of Antauri’s spirit. What an odd day that had been.

The Alchemist had his hands folded within the folds of his sleeves.  _ “It has been a few weeks since I recorded last. Of importance, first, the day Lucy passed, I buried her alongside the other two and protected them all with the strongest light magic I can conjure… so that the darkness in me can never bring them to harm.” _

At his sister’s name, Otto choked down another sob, and Gibson put his hand on his shoulder. It made sense, Antauri rationalized, that he had protected the bodies with magic. He’d never studied much true magic, the Power Primate was complex enough, but it tallied that magic of light would protect against darkness. It was telling of the Alchemist’s care for his monkeys that he would try and protect them, even in death. He didn’t know what was truly to come, what he, as Skeleton King, would be able to do. Skeleton King controlled death, nightmares, undead, darkness itself… Chiro had recalled to him that he’d had nightmares about Skeleton King raising the dead. Antauri shook his head and returned his attention to the remainder of the recording.

_ “I have given them as much time as I believe I can afford, for them to adjust to their forms, to their weapons, to their skill sets, that I am so happy that they are improving in daily.” _ A small smile turned up the corner of the Alchemist’s lips. 

“ _ SPRX-77 has been utilizing both the piloting and driving simulator goggles, and is performing well and is quite excited and proud of himself for that. Each of them have been practicing with the vehicle simulator, of course, but Sparx is actually achieving the highest consistent results. His reflexes have always been astonishingly quick and I am very glad that that dexterity has translated well into an incredibly useful skill! _

_ “Otto has made himself a little workbench in the corner of one of the rooms and every day it seems he has new ideas for projects, and improvements and upgrades for all  _ my _ projects. _ ” He chuckled.  _ “He has such a unique, brilliant mind that always continues to amaze me. And underneath that brilliance, underneath the green and white metal and fur, lies a kind, devoted heart, that yearns to make the lives of all around him better. The team, and the Super Robot, are quite lucky to have him. _

_ “Gibson has read every single science-related book I own, twice, most likely, and is doing his best to assist me with my work, whenever I allow it.” _ He shook his head, thin smile turning into a bit of a grin.  _ “He asks the most intuitive questions on every type of science, and as a result has learned much very, very quickly. He will be well suited as an advisor of science for the team. I believe his cybervac drills are the perfect match for him, a multiple-capability weapon for a multifaceted scientist. _

_ “My dearest Nova is quite the powerhouse. She is training daily with the equipment and her weapons, and she is always very happy to show me her feats of strength. I can count on both hands the number of times she has proudly trooped into my workshop carrying something that for all intents and purposes a monkey of her size should not be able to bear the weight of! Armor paneling, for the Super Robot. Crates and boxes. Heavy equipment. Stacks of books taller than her!"  _ The Alchemist smiled. _ "Her incredible strength will serve her well, and once she has learned to channel and focus that strength through further training, it is my belief that she will be a true force to be reckoned with. _

_ “Antauri… well, Antauri is as quiet as ever, reading and studying much as Gibson has been, but drawn to my three books of philosophy instead of my many, many books of science. He’s read them over and over and I’m sure he has almost memorized them by now! He is also improving with his weapons, his unique Ghost Claws that I poured much magic into to make perfect. And he is doing well as a mediator among the team. For all the strong personalities my dear monkeys have grown into, a mediator is surely needed! _

He shook his head.  _ “And lastly, my firstborn, Mandarin. He is every bit the leader I was hoping he would grow to be. He is firm with the team, and though sometimes he can be quite cross with them... he is doing his best to wrangle them all into shape, to help them grow into their abilities and powers, and to be able to work together.”  _ The Alchemist sighed.  _ “He is also adjusting to his own weapons, the gauntlets I was forced to give him in lieu of true transformers. Initially he did complain about them, but he is glad to have them all the same. He is stubborn and determined to make them work and be just as good as, if not better than, the others. I hope that that stubbornness will continue to develop into fierce determination to do right and to protect Shuggazoom, and not stagnate into unwillingness to change or adapt.” _

He spoke of each one of them with such care and pride, and it was obvious to each one of the Monkeys listening that in spite of everything, he had truly loved them. All of them. Even the ones that didn’t make it. The eyes of the man on the screen were sunken, and there were many more wrinkles around them than any man of his age should have had to carry. His frame seemed to become thinner with each passing recording. He was suffering under the curse of the Dark Ones, and yet he worked harder than any one being should have to. For that’s what he was, only a human. A man that had done wrong, a man that had done right, a man that had loved, lost, learned, suffered, laughed, cried, and above all, a man who had done everything he could for his world. 

The Alchemist’s bony hands wrenched together.  _ “Today is my monkeys’ final day with me. Tomorrow I will wipe their memories. I regret having to do so, but I cannot have them have any remembrance of me, or of the thing I am becoming. It is known that they will someday, in some future, clash with the darkness in me, and I cannot risk them not opposing it with all their strength. As well… I must wipe their memories of their siblings and of their childhood. I will wipe them twice, scrub their minds as clear as my technology allows, for I must ensure that they never remember the siblings they left behind.” _

They’d known, from their nightmare, that the reason they’d had their memories wiped in the first place, was because they couldn’t know what was coming, what evil the Alchemist was going to succumb to. And it… it made sense. If they’d known from the beginning that Skeleton King had once been the man who had created them, they might not have fought him as hard as they should have… and that would have been  _ disastrous _ for Shuggazoom.

But this was why they did not remember their twins. The Alchemist had wiped their minds so  _ thoroughly _ that they had forgotten their very existence. To protect them. To keep them from despair. To keep them hoping in a bright future and not trapped in a grief-laden past.

The Alchemist sighed and pressed his hands together in a prayer. _ “I began these logs to keep record of my monkeys’ milestones in the building process, but I fear they have only immortalized my sins. If in the future my monkeys ever do find these recordings, I hope they will forgive me.”  _ He opened his eyes, one red, one blue, and smiled. _ “Fight well, keep hope, do well, my monkeys. Protect Shuggazoom. That is all I wish for you.” _

The video irised out, and the folder-laden home screen reappeared. The Monkeys all looked at each other.  _ Now what? _ echoed in every mind.

Otto leaned over the keyboard and detached the hard drive. He took it in his hands and plunked it back into the blue Monkey’s hands. Gibson wordlessly took it and went to go put it back in his lab.

“Well, I for one don’t think there’s any way in hell I’m going to sleep tonight,” came Sparx’s voice from his chair.

Gibson ducked back out of his lab into the main room. “Sparx, such language,” he said without any actual hint of scolding in his tone.

There was a loud exhale but no retort.

Otto sighed. It was two something AM. They had to be up in five and a half hours. They had to at least try to go back to bed, even though Sparx was probably right.

“We should try and rest,” Antauri said, speaking Otto’s thoughts into existence. “It would not do for us to be exhausted and run down before the morning even begins. It is not fair to Chiro.”

Nova walked over to Sparx’s chair and peeked her face around the curve of it. He looked up at her and quickly tried to scrub the remains of tears from his cheeks.

Nova smiled. “I don’t care about that, Sparx. We’ve all cried tonight.”

The warmth in her tone stabbed at the grief still frozen in his chest. “I’m not usually the one… actually, we would never…”

Nova leaned against the curve of the chair. “In case you haven’t noticed… it hasn’t been a usual night.”

Sparx let out a thin chuckle at that. He let her pull him out of his chair and the whole group of them made their way to their tubes to try and go back to bed.

None of them slept well that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news, all the Monkeys know now. Bad news, there's still one team member that hasn't been told...
> 
> This is the chapter I cried a little bit writing, if you guys were curious. I cried when Otto cried. This was so painful for me to write, I said before I usually don't do angst but I wrote it really heavy in this chapter... that being said, I am really proud of myself for hopefully being able to convey much heavier emotions than I usually would write! Also please feel free to yell at me in the comments, I'm curious what you guys thought of it.
> 
> Edit: my friend drew me this[ AMAZING FANART](https://formless-monkeys.tumblr.com/post/641886957465747456/equal-parts-emotional-anguish-and-an-exploration) of Sparx's big emotional breakdown and poor Antauri's reaction :(


	4. Chapter 4

“Here are your fried eggs, Nova,” Gibson said, sliding them out of the pan and onto a plate.

Nova took them. “Thanks, Gibson.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

Chiro leaned against the counter and ate his cereal, looking around at his team. They were all acting very subdued. Even Antauri, who was naturally serious, was acting downright  _ somber _ . He’d noticed Gibson acting weird, and he was still trying to make him tell him what was up with that… but now _all_ of them were being very serious. Even Sparx.  _ Especially _ Sparx. This was not normal, and it was  _ weirding him out. _

He put his bowl in the sink and cleared his throat. All the Monkeys looked at him. “So, who wants to tell me why you all look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

All the Monkeys turned pale.

Chiro crossed his arms. “You guys are all acting really weird, and not in the good way like you’re all planning a surprise for me. You’re acting weird in a really bad way, and I’m starting to get worried.” He focused his attention on the blue Monkey. “Gibson, you were the first one to start acting strange. That night after you got back from the lab you were so distracted you threw all of your tournament matches. That’s not like you.”

The Monkeys all looked at each other and came to a silent, unanimous decision. “Chiro, we’re all right,” Antauri told the boy. “We… we are upset, but it will pass with time. Do not worry about us.”

Chiro tapped his foot on the floor with a frustrated staccato rhythm. “Okay, so you’re upset… and you’re not going to tell me why you’re upset?” The looks on all the Monkeys’ faces were so pained that he almost wanted to drop the topic. But he couldn’t have his team be a mess.

“Leave it be, Chiro,” Antauri said with a tone of finality.

Chiro folded his arms tight. “Fine.”

* * *

Two days later, Sparx went missing.

“Where would he  _ go? _ _”_ Otto groaned, after checking the cameras for the eighth time.

“I don’t know, you guys tell me,” Chiro muttered to himself, checking the radar again. “You’re so good at hiding things from me…”

Nova sat in her pod chair, checking all their messages. He hadn’t tried to call them, hadn’t left a note or a message or anything. She and Gibson had just gotten back from patrol, and he was gone. Her heart sank. What if he’d gotten kidnapped?  _ It wouldn't be the first time. _

They checked all the cameras inside the Robot. They pinged for his location within the Robot. They checked the camera feeds from all over the city, and checked for his location there, too. Nothing. He wasn’t within the city. That didn’t leave them with much to work with.

Apparently he hadn’t gone out to surprise them with lunch.

Gibson gave up trying to finesse the radar search and set it to search the entire surface of Shuggazoom. It was a search that would take time, but it would find the red Monkey.

Antauri levitated above his seat and tried to think. Why would Sparx run away? He thought back to Sparx’s behavior over the past couple of days. He’d been upset, as they all were, but he seemed to be taking it… almost harder than the rest of them. Perhaps it was because his brother had been the first of the three to pass away. Perhaps he felt responsible for that death in some way. Perhaps… perhaps he felt guilty for surviving. That was a feeling Antauri was quite painfully familiar with.

Half an hour later, the computer pinged and the team gathered around in an instant. A red dot shone out on the side of planet Shuggazoom, far away from the City.

“Zone of Wasted Years,” Otto read numbly.

“More specifically, the Savage Lands,” Gibson noted heavily. “I’ll give you all one guess as to where he is.”

“The lab,” Nova breathed.

“All right, then let’s go find him,” Chiro said, gripping his fists hard. “Monkeys, mobilize.”

“Foot Crusher Cruiser 6, go!”   
“Foot Crusher Cruiser 5, go!”   
“Fist Rocket 4, go!”   
“Brain Scrambler Pilot 2, go!”   
“Torso Tank Driver 1, go!”   
“Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce, go!”

Chiro called for a split into Vehicle Mode, remembering the last time they’d tried to fly without Sparx’s Fist Rocket. They’d been unbalanced and it was almost impossible to control the Super Robot when it was like that. So they split up and drove.

Chiro bit his lip and sighed. Why? Why… why were they acting this way? Like they were hiding some terrible secret from him. Maybe they were. He pressed the gas pedal a little bit harder, coaxing a little more power from the Torso Tank’s engines. And for Sparx to just leave, without telling anyone, without leaving a message, without anything, that had never happened before! 

Chiro always made an effort to learn from the events he went through. Antauri had told him time and time again that each circumstance, no matter how unpleasant, was something he could learn from. But then time and time again Chiro would find himself at a loss as to how to navigate an entirely new experience.

Chiro gripped the handles of his console until the metal bit into his gloves. Why wouldn’t they tell him? Did they still not trust him? He’d been with them for such a long time! They trusted him with other secrets, like about Mandarin. He’d proven himself again and again that he was a good leader, that he was a good friend, that he was a good person. But they didn’t want to tell him what was going on. They insisted that he didn’t need to know. And it hurt him.

“Just a few more kilometers, Chiro,” Gibson said, his image flickering up on one of his screens. “Not too long.”

“Thanks for the status update, Gibson,” Chiro said, avoiding a thorny green vine stabbing up out of the ground in the middle of the road. “You heard that, team? Not much longer. Stay in formation.”

They navigated under and around thick dark vines that turned into thick, dark, slimy trees. It was a bit of a struggle and honestly it probably would have been easier to fly, (debatably, because of the balance issue), but they were already most of the way there. Chiro grimaced and blasted his way past a particularly stubborn rock formation. And there it was.

They assembled the Super Robot back into Machinder Mode, set it next to the vine-covered building, and gathered back in the main room.

“Can you sense him, Antauri?” Chiro asked.

Antauri closed his eyes and was silent for a moment. “The energy in this region is very… disconcerting. It is difficult for me to pinpoint Sparx’s presence.” He opened his eyes and looked up at the boy. “But he is nearby.”

Chiro sighed. “Okay, team, search the lab and whoever finds him first call the team.” There were nods all around. “Monkeys, mobilize.”

They scrounged the lab from top to bottom. Library, training room, lab equipment, storage rooms, bedrooms, kitchen. All dusty and cobwebby and completely deserted. But there were fresh footprints in the dust, their own square monkey-sized footprints. Someone had been here very recently. Someone perhaps searching for something.

Nova found him, finally. “Nova to Monkey Team. I found Sparx. He’s behind the lab.”

“Roger, Nova,” Chiro said, a heavy sigh escaping his chest. “Good work. We'll be right there.” He put his hand on one of the dusty stasis tubes and looked around at all the Alchemist’s old equipment.  _ I wonder what Sparx was looking for…? _

The team gathered on the ground behind the building. Maybe it had once been a lawn, but now it was mostly dead grass and overgrown plants. Luckily none of them were of the carnivorous variety. Gibson shuddered at the memory. Otto sliced a couple of sharp brambles out of the way absentmindedly.

Deep in the corner of those grounds, right before it turned into a tiny stream, there was a little thicket hidden by deeply gnarled branches and thick vines. And there was a flash of red metal. “Sparx!” Chiro called. “You okay?” There was no answer, and Chiro plunged on, heart dropping, leading his team forward.

At last they reached the red Monkey, and the yellow Monkey with him. Chiro leaned his hand against one of the trees. “Sparx, you really shouldn’t just run away like that. We thought something happened—”

“I found them,” Sparx interrupted quietly, derailing Chiro’s train of thought.

Gibson froze stock still.

Otto gasped, hands flying to his mouth, pupils shrinking to points.

Antauri reached out to steady him, but he also inhaled sharply at the red Monkey’s words.

Chiro looked at the red Monkey, really looked at him, and he noticed for the first time that his cheeks… were wet. The rims of his lenses were darkened from exhaustion, and he was grinding his knuckles into the ground like he was trying to break them. Chiro looked at Nova, who was kneeling next to him, and she met his eyes, but shook her head. “Who?” he asked helplessly. “What are you talking about?”

Sparx took a deep shaky inhale and ducked between two of the vines into the thicket. Nova followed him. Then Gibson, then Otto, then Antauri, and the silver Monkey motioned for Chiro to follow. The boy obeyed, a tingly feeling of apprehension crawling up his limbs to his heart.

Light filtered down through the canopy above them, enough to see where they were. Wordlessly Sparx pointed. There were three white stones set flat into the earth, smooth and unblemished despite their age, with inscriptions in magically perfect writing.

The first:  _ Natsu, brother of SPRX-77. 7.14.51. _

The second:  _ Delphei, brother of Antauri. 7.22.51. _

The third:  _ Lucy, sister of Otto. 7.29.51. _

Chiro’s breath froze in his chest as he read the words. His entire universe collapsed around him, suffocating him, drawing all the breath from his lungs and replacing it with fear. There had been… more monkeys? He’d been surprised enough that there had been a sixth monkey, a previous leader who had betrayed them. But now there were… well, there  _ had been  _ three more.  _ Brother. Sister. _ Those words struck cold into his heart, pointed like sharp icicles stabbing into his flesh.

Otto collapsed to his knees and traced his fingers over Lucy’s name. He traced every single letter, the whole inscription, down to the death date. He had to feel the stone beneath his fingers, to feel the divots of the inscription pressing into his metal skin. He had to feel a connection to her… somehow.

Antauri pressed his hands to the cold surface of Delphei’s stone. He ran his fingers over the inscription.  _ Delphei. Delphei. Delphei. _ He never wanted to forget his brother’s name again. He’d been made to forget once, and he never wanted to lose his memory again.

Sparx sat down heavily next to Natsu’s stone, leftmost of the other two. He brought his fists down once, twice, three times, slamming his fists to the dead grass. His whole body shook. It was wrong. Every ounce of sense screamed against the unfairness. Natsu, his own brother!

Nova looked up at Chiro. He was frozen just as stiff as Antauri had been that night they’d watched the tapes. She wrapped her tail around Chiro’s knee and he responded to that light touch, moving his gloved hand to rest on the top of her helmet. She leaned against him, gripping the back of his shirt tight in her hand. They had to tell him now. There was no more avoiding it.

Gibson stood at Chiro’s other side, arms tightly folded and eyes firmly closed. He couldn’t cry when the team was here, it was bad enough he’d done it in private multiple times. But he couldn’t deny the emotions, and seeing everyone else’s response to… to what Sparx had found…  _ Argh! _ He cursed the red Monkey for dragging them all out here. Why would he want to see the burial place, what purpose would that serve? Could he hope to gain any catharsis from that, or would it only make it worse? He shook his head and fought down the thick tears that rose in his throat.

Some long minutes passed, and the atmosphere calmed measurably. Chiro finally dared to opened his mouth and voice the questions that weighed heavy in his soul. “Guys? I know you didn’t want to tell me why you were upset, and I don’t know why you didn’t want to tell me. I guess… I guess you were hurting so much that you didn’t want me to get hurt too.” He clenched his fists. “But I need to know. Who are these guys? Brothers? Sister? You… you had more… more teammates? That got… got killed? How is that… even possible?” Tears pricked up in the corners of his eyes. “Didn’t… didn’t the Alchemist make you strong? Didn’t you train super hard so you could defend Shuggazoom? How could it be… how could it be that… that there were Monkeys that were killed?” 

He was terrified of what that meant for his team. Were they that vulnerable after all? He’d always known them to be strong and durable in battle, most injuries easily repaired or healed. How could this be, then? Could his teammates… actually  _ be _ killed?

Antauri took a deep breath and traced his fingers over Delphei’s inscription. “Read the date, Chiro,” he said in an even tone.

“July 22, 51…” Chiro read. “…oh.” That had been a very long time ago. Warm relief rushed through his veins, thawing the ice in his chest. These monkeys hadn’t died in the line of duty. They had passed away a long time ago. “But… but how, then? Who… who are they?”

“Our siblings,” Otto said simply.

Chiro’s brow furrowed.

Gibson took a deep breath and explained as simply as he could about the fates of their siblings. 

Chiro’s eyes were so wide they might well have been saucers. “That… that’s  _ awful _ .” How horrible, to have had siblings that had died. Someone you were once so close to, who actually knew you better than anyone else, being your twin, and… and they were gone. And the Alchemist had wiped those memories from them. That was awful too, to be having such a big piece of your identity missing and to not know about it. His heart wrenched hollowly in his chest.

A strange sensation wafted through the thicket, and Antauri jumped to his feet. Chiro gasped, sensing the odd feeling as well. “Antauri?”

“I sense it too, Chiro,” Antauri said, Ghost Claws already activated.

“It feels… familiar…” Otto noted, getting to his feet and activating his saws.

Sparx rubbed his arm roughly across his face to get rid of the tear stains and got out his magnets with a growl. “Somebody’s gonna be sorry they wanted to mess with us today.”

“I’m not sure that’s the problem, Sparx,” Chiro said, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Chiro knows everything now, the team has seen where their siblings are buried, and there's something coming for them, a strange force that they can't quite identify...
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter is so short! This chapter was basically all set up for the last chapter, where everything _hopefully_ will be resolved... And speaking of the last chapter, it _might_ be two weeks before I put it up... apologies in advance, if that ends up being the case! I hope that you'll find the ending of the fic will be worth the wait!


	5. Chapter 5

They stumbled out of the thicket, arms, legs, and tails all tangled up in brambles and vines, and pried themselves loose and looked around.

They were no longer on the lab’s back lawn.

Gibson knelt down and touched the ground, the horizontal surface they were standing on. A wisp of green smoke puffed up from where his fingers touched. Otto scuffed his feet and more green smoke arose. “This is super weird,” Nova said, and her voice echoed.

There were clouds swirling around them so thick they could see nothing except each other. Green energy curled within the depths of those clouds, and Chiro felt the warm energy that lay just beneath his heart quiver. “It’s… it’s the Power Primate,” he said, as the warmth became stronger. “Something… something’s happening.”

Antauri still had his Ghost Claws in battle position, but his eyes were squeezed closed in concentration. Chiro was right. Where were they, though? Did the Power Primate have the ability to… to transport them? He supposed it did, the capabilities of the Power Primate were many, and even though he’d studied it for a long time, he probably would never know everything about it. He reached out with his senses and felt something very incredibly odd, terribly frightening, and hauntingly familiar. His eyes snapped open.

Seconds passed, and with every heartbeat the feeling got stronger. The rest of the team could sense it now, too. They took their weapons out and formed a ring, protecting Chiro at the center as they always did.

A shadow appeared through the mist, making its way toward them. The Monkeys drew their formation tighter and lightning danced along Chiro’s knuckles. The shadow came closer, becoming larger and larger… and then a cloud blew aside and the team squeezed their eyes closed against the wind.

But it was not an enemy that was coming to face them.

On the contrary.

They opened their eyes again, and a Robot Monkey stood before them. One with maroon fur and black lenses. At his side appeared two more Robot Monkeys, one with deep violet fur and soft yellow-greenish lenses, and one with bright lime green fur and cotton-candy pink lenses.

Every single heart stopped for that one single moment.

And then a whoop of joy broke the silence.

* * *

Natsu rushed at his brother and tackled him right out of formation, knocking him to the ground. He hugged Sparx hard around the shoulders. “Holy Shuggazoom, Sparx, I was hoping I’d see you around sometime! Don’t know how you got here, but I’m really glad to see you!”

Sparx looked up at him, eyes darting to take in every detail. “N-Natsu?”

Natsu pressed his fist to his chest and nodded. “Yup! It’s me.”

Sparx’s eyes widened. His brother had never had the chance to become a Robot Monkey, and yet here he was, appearing to be completed. He nodded slowly.

Natsu tilted his head. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own twin. That’s rude.”

Sparx swallowed. “But… uh… didn’t you… you… uh… you passed away before you could get… built into a Robot Monkey?”

Natsu slapped his forehead. “Oh, right!” He grinned. “It’s okay. Since the Power Primate is letting us visit you, we can look however we want. If it’ll make you feel better, I can switch back to the original.”

“No!” Sparx almost shouted. Natsu tilted his head again. “Uh… I like this look better. Looks good on you.”

Natsu grinned and hugged him again. “That’s the brother I remember. Power Primate, I missed you.”

Sparx wrapped his arms around his brother and buried his muzzle in his shoulder. The hole in his heart closed a little.

* * *

Delphei approached the group slowly. He didn’t see his brother anywhere. Blue, yellow, green, red, it all checked out. But no black. His gaze fastened on the silver monkey, their father’s, the Alchemist’s, very last project. But it seemed to be… standing and moving, and there was a warm light in its eyes that was fastened… on him. His heart flipped over. No black fur among them, but there was silver. “Antauri?” he whispered. The silver monkey was at his side in a moment, fingers immediately threaded in his. He looked into its eyes. He’d know that soul anywhere. “Antauri?”

“Delphei…” the silver monkey whispered, and the violet monkey would know that voice anywhere. It was his brother, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Antauri crumpled to his knees in front of his brother, both hands clasped tight in his. “Delphei… Delphei, I’m so sorry…” he groaned.

“Antauri, why on Shuggazoom would you be sorry?” Delphei asked, completely bewildered.

“I’m sorry for taking the silver monkey,” Antauri choked out. “You should have been able to take it, to keep your soul in the realm of the living. You shouldn’t have had to die.”

Delphei wrenched one of his hands from Antauri’s grip and placed it on the black stripe in the center of the silver helmet. “Oh. Oh, I see. But Antauri, it wouldn’t have been ready. Father was still working on it while he was working on us.” He knelt down and hugged his brother around the shoulders. “But why do you have it? What happened to you?”

Antauri let out a deep wheeze. “I… I had to die. To save the life of an innocent. But through the grace of the Power Primate he brought me back, set me into this robotic body. And here I am.”

Delphei pressed his forehead against his brother’s. “It was… it was a little while ago, wasn’t it? There was a day where I could feel something kind of like your presence, and my heart jumped. I was so excited… and kind of scared, too, knowing what that meant. I turned, and I looked for a while, but you’d disappeared again. It… it does make sense, then, that when I felt your spirit, that was the moment of your death, before you were sent back to the living world.”

Antauri didn’t know how to feel about that, that his brother had been momentarily able to sense him. He almost felt as though he had… disappointed his twin by not fully appearing in the next realm. His brow furrowed and he looked down pensively.

“Antauri, please don’t… please don’t think that you hurt my feelings or anything. It was very faint—I almost thought I had imagined it.” Delphei smiled, switching the topic back to the Monkey in front of him. “You were able to return to life, how amazing! To sacrifice yourself to save innocent lives… that is the greatest kind of love, you know,” Delphei said softly. “The greatest gift. And I think that… the Power Primate rewarded you… by giving you the means to return to the world of the living.”

“I… I suppose you’re right, Delphei,” Antauri said, putting his hand on his brother’s arm.

“Antauri, I’m very, very happy to see you, no matter your form,” Delphei said softly. “Metal or not.” He tapped his brother on the head. “I missed you a lot.”

Antauri sighed and looked up at his twin once more. “And I as well, Delphei. More than you know.”

* * *

Lucy scampered over to her brother as fast as she could. He was standing stock still like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Otto, Otto, Otto!” she cried, stretching out her arms, jumping the last few feet to reach him. And then he was in her arms, his fur sliding between her fingers, his warm muzzle pressed against her forehead. And he was crying. She smoothed her hands all over his helmet and his face, wiping at his tears. “Oh, Otto, Otto, it’s okay, it’s okay, oh…” She had him cuddled in her arms, the warm familiarity of it making her heart sing. “Oh, oh, oh…” She started kissing him all over his face, lips tracing over the lines of his lenses and ridges of his helmet, and he chuckled against the ticklishness of it.

“Lucy…” he managed after a moment. “It’s really you?”

“Real as the nose on your face,” she giggled. “Oh, Otto, I missed you so much. I hope you’ve been doing all right. Mandarin still giving you trouble?”

Otto slammed the lid back on that can of worms. “Uh, no. No trouble from Mandarin.”

“Good.” Lucy smiled. “He never was very appreciative of us.”

Otto chuckled thickly. “Nope.”

“Oh, Otto,” she sighed again, kissing him between his eyes. “Power Primate have mercy, I just missed hugging you.” She smiled and sat back a little, tail curling around her leg. “How’s the team? Nova still getting all banged up all the time? Gibson still being smarter than thou? Sparx still being a pain in the tail?”

“We’re all good,” Otto said, grinning back. “Better than good. Great, actually.”

Lucy clapped her hands. “Awesome! Oh!” She rocked back on her heels. “I hoped I would get to see you again, somehow, even though I know it’s not really possible. But I guess the Power Primate decided we were going to have an intervention. And here we are!”

“I’m really glad to see you, too,” Otto said truthfully. It made his heart feel a little better, to be able to speak with her face to face. He’d forgotten everything about her, forgotten that she existed, even, so at least now his heart would have a little bit to latch onto.

Otto opened his arms again and Lucy jumped into them, curling up in his lap. “Oh, Otto, you big softie.” She pressed her cheek to his forehead. “Don’t worry. I’m here right now.”

* * *

Chiro held his breath as three Robot Monkeys appeared out of the mist. He didn’t know anything about them, but he knew them. The Power Primate was letting him know. The red one, Natsu. The purple one, Delphei. The green one, Lucy. Each one rushed toward one of his Monkeys and there were hugs and tears and more hugs. He pressed his hands to his heart and looked down at Nova and Gibson still standing at his side. “So… I guess that you guys are a twin pair?”

Gibson nodded. “For some reason… Nova and I are the only pair that both twins survived.”

Chiro idly wondered which one of the pair of them would have died if the trend had continued, but just as quickly as the thought came up he shoved it away. That wasn’t worth getting into. He looked down at Nova and grinned. “Never would have thought you guys were twins. You’re so different, personality wise, that it’s kind of weird. And your fur is two totally different colors, not even alike.” He pointed at Otto and Lucy and Natsu and Sparx. “They almost have the same color fur as each other.”

Gibson chuckled. “Well… we are fraternal twins, seeing as we are opposite gender. All of us are fraternal, I believe, as none of the pairs of twins are or were identical to begin with. I may have read about it in the data I found..." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The fact that Nova's and my fur is quite different from each other… well, that’s most likely due to dominant and recessive genetics. Any siblings can receive any combination of traits from either parent. And as for the personalities… even identical twins can have differing personalities. Despite identical appearances, twins do have completely different personalities, interests and skills. Psychology, nature versus nurture, and all that. It is interesting, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Chiro said, smiling. He knelt down to Monkey height and looked at the three twins talking animatedly with their respective siblings. “I think the Super Robot would be really crowded if we had all of you guys… but it would be fun, I think.”

Nova choked on her inhale and coughed into the inside of her arm. “Chiro!”

Chiro put up his hands innocently. “I’m just saying.”

* * *

Sparx sat across from his brother, his hands caught between Natsu’s. “It… it’s really nice to be able to see you,” Sparx told him. “We… we watched the Alchemist’s tapes, and we got to the one where he talked about how you died… and I just got so angry and so sad… I got so mad at him. It was his fault you died.” His hands shook. “It wasn’t fair. You didn’t even get a chance to get built into a Robot Monkey. You didn’t get the same chance as the rest of us. It sucks.”

Natsu smiled. “Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t, but I can’t miss what I never knew. I’m not mad. Honest.”

“Really? Well… that’s good…” Sparx sighed.

“You were there with me,” Natsu reminded him, poking him between his eyes. “You held me, I remember that. When I was in pain, you hugged me, held my hand, and that made it better. And when it was almost time for me to go, Dad held me, and you snuggled close, like you knew I liked, and you held my hand. You were the last thing I saw before the Power Primate took me, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

Sparx’s breath hitched in his chest. “But I don’t remember that! The Alchemist, like, triple-wiped our memories so we wouldn’t know about any of you! I didn’t remember that you existed, I only found out because Gibson made copies of his files and we found the video logs. You shouldn’t… be so _fond_ of me.”

“It’s not your fault you don’t remember, you just said so,” Natsu said, grinning. “Geez, you’re just as big of a dummy as you used to be.”

Sparx pouted a tiny bit and Natsu laughed. “Hey, I want to try something. Hang on.” The Power Primate wafted up around them, bright green and red, and Sparx felt Natsu’s voice very strongly in his mind. _Hey, Power Primate!_ he yelled. _Any chance I can take Sparx on a trip down memory lane for a bit?_

There was no verbal response, only an amused chuckle, but the energy wafted up around them brighter and Sparx had to close his eyes. He opened them to find themselves on a bright grassy lawn.

“What…?” he complained, putting his hand up to shield his eyes from the sunlight.

“Down memory lane, like I said,” Natsu said, grinning. “Come on, I see us right over there.”

Sparx looked up, following his brother’s pointed finger, and immediately caught a glimpse of two regular monkeys climbing a great gnarled tree with scraggly limbs. He got to his feet and ran over to the tree, Natsu right on his heels.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

“Come on, Natsu, bet I can climb higher than you!” Sparx teased, grabbing another limb and hoisting himself over.

“No fair, you got a head start!” Natsu complained, jumping up to the next branch and catching it with his tail.

“Catch up, or I’m gonna get to the top first!” Sparx shouted down, his voice echoing in the branches.

“Stupid brother. So unfair,” Natsu grumbled, leaning his weight over to grab for the next highest tree limb.

Sparx leaned down from two branches above him and grinned, that dumb cheshire cat grin that drove his brother nuts. “If it’ll make you feel better, we can both start over and it’ll be fair this time.”

“I don’t need your charity!” Natsu called up, brows furrowed in concentration as he closed his hard around the next branch. “I can beat—”

_SNAP!!!_

The limb Natsu had his hand around broke off the trunk. His balance shifted and his feet slipped and time seemed to slow as he grasped for anything to keep himself from falling dozens of feet to the ground. Nothing was there. His eyes widened and a panicked screech wrenched itself out of his throat.

With reflexes as quick as the lightning in his name, Sparx leaped down branch to branch to branch and caught his brother’s tail as he dropped past. He let out a heavy breath as Natsu dangled heavily from his hand.

“Ow,” came a disgruntled mumble from below him.

Sparx grabbed his tail with both hands and swung him up onto the branch next to him. Natsu turned to face him, gingerly rubbing his back.

Sparx put his hands on his shoulders, his beady black eyes wide with worry. “Monkeydoodle, Natsu, you gotta be more careful. You okay?”

“Yeah… sorry,” Natsu mumbled. “Didn’t mean for you to have to do that…”

Sparx hugged him tight and after a moment he hugged back. “Of course, I’ve got you.” They separated and Sparx punched him very lightly in the shoulder. “I’m still gonna beat you to the top, though. Come on, before someone yells at us to go back inside.”

Natsu rolled his shoulders and grinned brightly. “You got it, Sparky.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

“I can’t believe you called me Sparky,” Sparx groaned.

“Of course I did, that was your nickname,” Natsu said, grinning at him.

“I thought my nickname was Sparx,” Sparx retaliated, raising a brow. “Isn’t my actual name SPRX-77?”

“I don’t know what the official name was, I just always called you Sparky because I liked it,” Natsu said, folding his arms. “Doesn’t anybody else call you Sparky?”

Sparx let out a low, hoarse chuckle. “Gibson does, sometimes, when he’s mad at me. And Nova does, too, once in a while. But I hate that nickname, I always hated it, and I don’t know why.”

Natsu tapped his chin. “Maybe ‘cause that’s what I always called you, and, y’know…”

“But I didn’t remember you!” Sparx burst out. “How could I not like something because of a person I didn’t know existed?”

“It’s possible,” Natsu said, shrugging. “It’s fine, though, don’t worry.” The scene in front of them began to shift, and in a moment they found themselves in the interior of the lab.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Natsu, we’re gonna get caught,” Sparx said, his tail flicking nervously. “Why are we doing this again?”

Natsu looked down at him witheringly from the kitchen countertop. “I’m hungry. And I thought you were hungry too. And since when do you care about getting caught?”

“Since Mandarin’s not in a good mood today and this’ll be the second time this week we’ve done something we’re not supposed to. Why do I always end up putting my tail on the line for you?”

Natsu stuck his tongue out at his brother. “Because you care about me, I think.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Sparx grumbled.

“Just keep an eye out for Mandarin, Captain, or Dad,” Natsu said as he tapped at the touchpad-lock attached to the cabinet. “You’re the lookout, so look. Please?”

“Do you even know the numbers?” Sparx asked, his eyes fastened on the doorway.

“Yes!” Natsu said proudly. “I saw Dad put them in a couple of days ago when he was putting our food away.”

“Work faster, then,” Sparx hissed.

“Critic,” Natsu grumbled. Five zero five… _oh, what was that last number? Eight?_ Red beep. _Six?_ Red beep. _Two?_ Red beep.

“Natsu! Quit foolin’ around!”

Oh, it was another zero. Green beep. The cabinet opened. “Bingo!”

He grabbed a handful of nutrition packets and dried fruit packets and tossed them down to his brother who caught them carefully. The wrappers made loud crackling noises and both of them glanced nervously at the door, ears alert for heavy human footsteps or monkey noises.

Satisfied with his haul, Natsu clicked the cabinet shut and the two of them scampered as fast as they could back to the big den with their packets. Fortunately, Mandarin wasn’t there. None of the others were, actually. Sparx shoved the crinkly packets under his blankets and groaned. “Never again, Natsu.”

Natsu tossed him a dried fruit packet. “Until you get hungry again.”

Sparx stuck his tongue out at him and ripped the pack open with his teeth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“I’m still not sure how we got away with that, honestly,” Natsu said, raising a brow.

Sparx rubbed his head. “Wow, we pulled off a heist?”

“We pulled off a couple.” Natsu grinned. “I think we got caught at least as much as we succeeded but Dad was so proud of the fact that we were smart enough to do it that he let it slide almost every time.”

“Whoa, really?”

“Yup.”

Several more memories floated by them, only short bits of moving pictures. A scene of the two of them wrestling under the Alchemist’s table while he worked on Sparx’s big red magnets. A scene of the two of them asleep, with Natsu stomach-down on top of Sparx’s stomach. A scene of the two of them very excitedly eating a piece of fruit that was almost as big as them.

“Wow, look at us,” Sparx said almost wistfully. “We sure were a team.”

“We were the best team,” Natsu said. “Brains and brawn always work best together.”

Sparx snorted. “Brawn?”

“Yep. I was brawn. You were brains. You always were observant and your reflexes were so fast they scared me sometimes. You memorized all kinds of stuff faster than I ever could.” Natsu hugged his brother around the shoulders. “And I was so proud of you for that.”

Tears began to creep up around the edges of Sparx’s lenses. He held onto his brother’s arms with a tight grip, fighting them back.

“I’m really glad the Power Primate brought us here,” Natsu mumbled. “I’m really glad to get to see you after all this time… and I guess a lot of time has passed, huh?”

“Y-yeah. A lot,” Sparx said, the corner of his mouth turning up.

“I’m sorry, Sparx, I’m so sorry…”

“For what?”

“For… being taken away from you,” Natsu mumbled into his shoulder. “I left you. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, the Power Primate did what it had to, but… I left you, and I’m sorry. And when we leave the In-Between, I have to leave you again.”

“I’m going to miss you, Natsu,” Sparx said, burying his muzzle in his brother’s chest.

“Me too, Sparx.” Natsu squeezed him tight. “Me too.”

* * *

Delphei smoothed his hands over his brother’s helmet. “Antauri, it is really is okay. I’m not upset at all.” He sat down on the ground, tugging Antauri down to sit next to him. “I’m not mad at Father, and I don’t resent you for surviving.” He smiled. “I’m _actually_ very proud of you for surviving twice, for actually cheating death. Not a lot of beings can say they did that.”

Antauri let out a shaky sigh.

Delphei pressed his hands to his heart and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “You… you know, out of all of our brothers and sisters, I was… not the most outgoing.” He smiled a bit. “Quite the opposite, in fact. We were both very quiet monkeys, and I think sometimes Father worried about us. But… we had each other.” Delphei sighed. “That’s why I got so scared when my building process started to go wrong, because things started to happen to me that I couldn’t control and you couldn’t help me with. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop bleeding. I was so scared, even though I was only a little bit conscious. But you were there, I could feel your spirit watching over me, even when I was in the healing tube, and that did reassure me.”

“I wish I could have done more for you,” Antauri said, lacing his fingers and looking down at his hands. “I didn’t go on to my Power Primate training until we left the Alchemist, so I didn’t have the ability to help you at all…”

“It’s all right, Antauri,” Delphei said again, shaking his head and smiling.

“I am sorry that I have forgotten about you,” Antauri said after a moment. “Now that I know… I feel like I abandoned you, left you behind.” His hands trembled a little.

“You didn’t purposely forget, did you?” Delphei asked with a hint of teasing in his tone.

Antauri shook his head. “Our memories were wiped quite thoroughly by the Alchemist.”

“Then don’t worry, Antauri.” Delphei put his hands on his shoulders. “But if you want, I could take you for a little while and show you what our lives were like before.”

“I… I would like that,” Antauri replied.

Delphei smiled softly. “All right. Power Primate?” 

The Power Primate chuckled in their minds, and it rose up around them bright lavender and green, and in a flash of light they found themselves landing softly on the floor in a room with lots of books. Antauri looked around wonderingly. Delphei nudged his shoulder and pointed. “There.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“That’s my piece, Delphei,” Antauri said, plucking it out of his brother’s hand. “It goes here.” He slotted the puzzle piece next to its match and smiled proudly.

“Oh. Sorry, Antauri,” Delphei mumbled, working on his own puzzle diligently. “I guess I just grabbed it out of your pile.”

There weren’t two piles of puzzle pieces, really, they’d gotten all mixed up together when Nova and Natsu had come barreling in a few minutes ago, and only Gibson’s annoyed screeches sent his sister and the dark red monkey off to play tag somewhere else.

“It’s all right, Delphei,” Antauri said comfortingly, patting his brother on the head. “Look, here’s one of yours.” He handed his brother a piece of his own puzzle.

“I’m sorry I didn’t want to go play with them,” Delphei said after a minute of putting the colored pieces in the board. “I just… they get so loud, and I… I don’t know, I don’t think they’d want me to play.”

“Delphei…” Antauri stopped and sat up a bit, the tip of his tail flicking. But before he could say anything to reassure his brother, he was interrupted by a much louder voice.

“Antauri? Delphei?”

“They’re in here!” Gibson yelled, behind the two of them. Delphei looked over at him, under Antauri’s arm.

The Alchemist appeared in the doorway. “There you are. My two little introverted monkeys. How are you doing? Working on something, I see?”

"A puzzle!” Antauri said proudly, holding up a piece for him to see.

The Alchemist knelt down and took the piece. “Amazing! And incredibly advanced. Cognitive skills, hand eye coordination, problem solving…” he ruffled Antauri’s fur gently. “I’ll never ceased to be amazed at how smart you all are.”

Delphei peeked out from behind Antauri and the Alchemist tilted his head at him. “Don’t be shy, little Delphei. Here.” He retrieved a piece of dried fruit from his pocket. “You’re doing an amazing job as well!” Antauri voiced his agreement.

Delphei took the fruit and nibbled on it as the Alchemist helped them with their puzzles, talking with them and helping them orient the pieces correctly. Gibson continued to look at the books, and Delphei wasn’t sure if he was actually reading them or not.

The Alchemist left after a while, going to check on the rest of the monkeys and some experiment he was working on, and Antauri turned back to his brother, winding his tail around his. “Antauri, do you really think I’m shy?” Delphei asked, purple brows creasing.

“A little bit.” Antauri patted his brother on the arm. “But we’re both quiet… and I like when we’re quiet together.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

“Oh, it hurts to watch,” Delphei groaned, rubbing the heels of his hands into his yellow-green lenses. “I was so painfully shy when I was that young.”

Antauri folded his hands. “Quiet together… that was much of our bond, wasn’t it? That we were quiet together.”

Delphei nodded. “My shyness did get a little better as I grew… I got a little better at interacting with all our siblings…” He shook his head, smiling. “But yes, we were quiet together, when everything else was loud, we could find quiet in each other.” He furrowed his brows. “Let me think,” he murmured, and the scene before them changed.

A roll of thunder crashed and Antauri jumped. Delphei smothered a laugh and pointed across the darkened room where two monkeys were sitting by a window. A monkey with fur so black it blended into the darkness had also just jumped at the loud sound.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“It’s okay, Antauri, it’s just thunder,” Delphei said comfortingly.

“I know, Delphei,” Antauri sighed, crouching back down and smoothing his fur. “Must it be so loud, though?”

“I guess so,” Delphei pondered. “Maybe the thunder’s so loud ‘cause the lightning’s so bright?”

In that moment the bolt of lightning cracked across the black sky. This time Delphei started, burying his face into his brother’s fur until the bolt disappeared. Antauri tapped his brother on the head and Delphei sat back up to look out at the rain. “Thanks for sitting with me,” he said softly.

Antauri smiled. “Of course, Delphei. You don’t like the lightning and I don’t like the thunder but we both like the sound of the rain.”

“That’s true.” They leaned against each other, watching the torrents come down almost diagonally in the wind, watching the droplets spray against the window, watching the wind whip at the thick dark branches above them.

“Delphei, did you know the rain makes the grass grow?” Antauri said after a moment. “It gets thirsty just as we do, and it drinks in the rain and grows taller.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Delphei said, looking over at his brother. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Gibson said he saw it in a book,” Antauri said. “He said it is part of something called _rain cycle._ ”

“Well, that explains why the grass always grows so much,” Delphei said, watching the torrential downpour with interest. “It does rain a lot.” His brow furrowed. “But the grass is always wet in the morning, even if it didn’t rain the night before. I wonder why that is. Does the grass sweat?”

“I doubt it,” Antauri said, furrowing his brow. “It is a plant.”

“Oh, right. Huh.”

They sat together for a long time, watching the rain, holding each other tight when thunder and lightning flashed. They listened to the noise of the drops hitting the window and the grass outside, and after a bit, they both fell asleep curled up next to each other, lulled by that soothing sound.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“It’s amazing how fascinated we were by simple things like dew,” Delphei chuckled. “We really didn’t know a lot back then.”

Antauri smiled. “We were young and innocent, and ignorant, too, in a lot of ways.”

“But we had each other,” Delphei said, smiling. “We were both afraid of the thunder and lightning, but we held onto each other when the other was afraid and stuck it out.”

“I still do like the sound of rain,” Antauri confessed. “It is a sound that calms my mind when I find myself tangled up with anxious thoughts.”

“Perhaps that is because of this,” Delphei mused. “Of this soothing memory.”

“But if I had forgotten this memory… how could it be that it would soothe me?”

“That is weird,” Delphei said, rubbing his chin. “Something unconscious, maybe?”

“Perhaps…”

“Oh!” Delphei perked up, tail flicking excitedly. “There was one other thing I wanted to show you, a memory of all of us together.”

“All of us?” Antauri queried.

Delphei nodded, and the room fizzled around them until they were standing in the main room of the Alchemist’s lab.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Could you please, Clayton?” the Alchemist begged, hands pressed together. “Just for an hour or so?”

The Captain sighed but a smile teased at the corners of his lips. “Well, all right. I have a board meeting at four o’clock, but I think I can manage.”

The Alchemist grinned. “Oh, I know how you love those meetings.”

The Captain held up a finger. “Ah, but it’s a stockholder meeting, not an investment meeting. Such a _deviation_ in my schedule.” He ran his fingers through his brown locks. “And _so_ much fun.”

“Well, I do think keeping the monkeys occupied while I replenish some supplies would be more fun, but you’ll have to let me know when I get back,” the Alchemist said, smiling.

“Okay, so there’s Antauri, Delphei, Nova, and Gibson right here,” the Captain said, pointing to the side of the worktable where said four monkeys stood. “Where’s the rest?”

“Oh, around here somewhere.” The Alchemist took a deep breath and shouted “MONKEYS!!!” and his shout was amplified by magic. Captain Shuggazoom covered his ears.

Hoots, squeaks, and chatters filled the room as a torrent of colored fur surged in the door. They gathered around the Captain’s black boots and looked up at the Alchemist excitedly.

“All right, monkeys, I’m going out, the Captain is in charge of you.” The Alchemist wagged a finger. “Behave, play nicely, and don’t make trouble for him, all right?”

“Yes, Dad,” the monkeys all chorused.

The Alchemist beamed. “I will be back shortly.” He swept out the door in a _swhoosh_ of scarlet-edged cloth and the monkeys all looked up at the Captain.

“Well, here I am,” the Captain chuckled. He plopped down to the floor and crossed his legs, settling his arms on his knees and looking around at his large group of monkeys. “I wonder what the citizens would say if they found out that Captain Shuggazoom was a severely overqualified sitter slash uncle.”

“They wouldn’t believe you, probably,” Sparx said, looking up into the man’s sparkling dark eyes.

The Captain chuckled. “Oh, well, not worth worrying over.” He laced his fingers together and stretched above his head. “Well, carry on, play, whatever you like, as long as you stay where I can see you.”

“Yes, Captain,” the monkeys all chorused.

Lucy settled on one of his thighs and groomed her fur. Mandarin settled himself in the center of his lap and proceeded to take a nap. Antauri and Delphei nestled close together, alongside Sparx and Gibson, to listen as the Captain spun a tale of his latest adventure, of how he had once again defeated his nemesis, Dr. Malicious. Natsu, Nova, and Otto played excitedly with some toys the Alchemist had left for them.

They quickly tired themselves out, and when the Alchemist got back, he found his friend with a lap overflowing with napping balls of fur. He chuckled with amusement, and the Captain shrugged, smiling.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“That was a nice day,” Delphei said. “It was a wonderful moment of peace… and I guess we never could’ve known we wouldn’t get very many more of those.”

“No, one never knows when one’s life will be turned upside down,” Antauri sighed. It made him a little happier, though, to know that they had had those nice moments of serenity before their universe had changed forever.

A few more memories floated in front of them, little moving pictures instead of full scenes. A scene of the two of them playing hide and seek, hiding from Otto. A scene of Antauri being tackled from behind by an overzealous Nova and Delphei diving out of the way.

Antauri watched with furrowed brows. He was deeply thankful to have this time to be with his brother, to remember times past… but there was something weighing on his mind. He sighed. “Delphei…”

“What’s the matter, Antauri?”

“Delphei… I…” He sighed. “What do you know of the silver monkey?”

“I remember Father was making it to help the Captain protect Shuggazoom,” Delphei replied. “A real robot monkey, not a cyborg as the rest of us were supposed to eventually become.”

Antauri nodded his head. “Yes… a fully robotic body. One that my soul now inhabits. And I fear… ah…” Antauri folded his own hands together. “In a body such as this… I fear that I… might not be able to die. To pass on into the next life someday… as you have already.”

Delphei’s brow furrowed. “Don’t tell me you _want_ to die?”

“No, not yet,” Antauri said. “There still is much work to be done in Shuggazoom and… and the team has someone they must look after until the correct time is at hand. But someday, when my time should properly come… I fear that time will pass me by.”

“And you will never be able to start the next journey,” Delphei said softly.

Antauri nodded.

Delphei sighed. “Antauri… I wish I could tell you something to make you feel better… but I can’t think of anything. That must be so scary for you sometimes…”

“I know, Delphei,” Antauri sighed. “But as much as I wished you would have a solution, it is just as much that I simply wished to share with you, to let you know why you may not see me… for a long time to come.”

“I’m happy to have you here, now,” Delphei said, threading his arm through his brother’s. “The Power Primate brought us here to have some final moments of peace, and no matter how short they are, I‘m glad to have them. So we can have some time to be quiet together, one more time.”

“I am glad to be here also,” Antauri said, tears again squeezing out of the corners of his blue lenses. “I promise I will not forget you again. I will carry you in my heart for as long as this body keeps me alive.”

* * *

“Otto, for Shuggazoom’s sake, _please_ stop crying,” Lucy said. She wiped at his face with the back of her hand. “I’m running out of dry space on my hands and I don’t have a handkerchief and since this is some kind of In-Between there’s _nothing here_ to work with.”

Otto snuffled and chuckled at that. “Sorry. I’m just… really happy to be able to see you. I forgot all about you, the Alchemist wiped our memories blank so we wouldn’t remember…”

Lucy tilted her head. “Well, that sounds like something he would do. He was worried, something about the darkness. I remember that awful mirror portal thing, where we were all gathered around, and Mandarin, that idiot, decided he was too good to not be curious, and he touched the stupid thing. And that created a whole lot of mess that I think Papa suffered a lot from.”

“Yeah… the Alchemist… he did get hurt from the darkness,” Otto said. “And that darkness… got bigger and bigger until it swallowed him right up.” He twisted his fingers together in his lap. “And then a monster came out of that darkness. Skeleton King. We’ve been fighting him… making sure he stays gone and that Shuggazoom stays safe.”

Lucy bit her lip and ran her thumb over Otto’s hand. “I wanted to be able to help. I wanted to learn how to use the medical equipment. Papa was gonna teach me how to use it. I always wanted to help the team. And I almost made it.” She smiled sadly. “But I got sick, and my brain started doing weird things that made me scared. You were there, though, and you hugged me through it and that made me happy.” She squeezed his hand. “I didn’t know how much time was passing, I started losing hearing and my sight was flickering, too. But you were with me, my wonderful twin, and I knew it was going to be all right.”

“But it wasn’t all right, though,” Otto said shakily. She’d wanted to be their medic? That would have helped them so much in so many ways! Gibson wouldn’t have had half the work he had to do! But Lucy had been taken from them, right as she was almost complete, and it wasn’t fair.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Lucy hummed. “The Power Primate did take me, but up until my very last moments, you were by my side, and even though I was kind of scared, I wasn’t too worried since I knew you were there.” She cupped his cheek in her hand. “You’re my twin. You stuck with me through everything, and I couldn’t have asked for a better brother than you.”

Otto clung to her for another long moment until he felt a giggle work its way out of her chest. “Do you really not remember anything? Anything we did together? Anything at all?”

Otto shook his head.

Lucy giggled again, bright and sweet. “Let’s see if I can do something about that.” The Power Primate wafted up around them bright green and dark green flames, and Lucy spoke to it. “Hi, Power Primate! Any chance you could let me take Otto around for a bit? I’ll bring him right back, I promise.”

The Power Primate laughed brightly and assented, the energy twirling up around them brighter and brighter until it burst and Otto had to close his eyes. He opened them in a brightly lit purple room. Lucy’s hand was in his, and he gripped it tightly. “Where are we?” His voice echoed oddly in the room.

“We’re in the past,” Lucy explained. “That’s where I asked the Power Primate to let me take you.”

“Oh.” Otto nodded.

“Look, there we are!” Lucy pointed, and the pair of them scampered across the room to see themselves, their past selves, original monkey selves, kneeling on the floor. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Otto, what are you doing?” Lucy asked, squinting at the clock in Otto’s hand.

Otto unscrewed another screw with a screwdriver he totally hadn’t stolen from the Alchemist. “I wanna know how it tells time. I think it has a timer, every minute it changes the number.”

Lucy sat down on the floor and tilted her head curiously. “Well, okay. I guess.”

“Hey, you’re always curious about how body parts fit together,” Otto commented as he pried the back panel off.

“And you’re always curious about how machines fit together,” Lucy shot back. “That’s fair. Just hurry up before Papa comes back and catches us. Or worse, Mandarin.”

Otto stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and very delicately picked through the wires in the back of the device, at last finding the batteries and prying them out as well. The clock turned off. He pursed his lips and put the batteries back in, but the numbers began to blink. “Huh. Those aren’t the same numbers as before.”

A heavy footstep echoed just past the doorway and both little monkeys screeched in surprise. With one smooth motion Lucy kicked at the pieces that Otto had laid on the floor and they slid under a nearby cabinet. She yanked the screwdriver out of his hand and rolled that under the cabinet too.

 _Tap tap TAP TAP._ Both monkeys looked up with wide eyes.

It was the Alchemist.

“Oh, there you are,” he chuckled. “I’ve been searching for you. It’ll be meal time soon, you know. Come on.”

Otto whooped and scampered after the purple robe, Lucy following half a step behind. “You are gonna go back and get it, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Otto said, grinning. “And thanks.”

Lucy let out a puff of a sigh and pushed him very lightly in the shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

Otto grinned and she smiled back.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Aww,” Otto said, pressing his hand to his chest. “You hid the clock because you didn’t want me to get in trouble.”

“Well, we were both gonna get in trouble if Papa saw, so kinda, yeah.” Lucy squeezed his hand. “I always had your back, whenever your curiosity got the better of you, and you always had mine, too.”

The scene before them warped and changed and they found themselves in the lab’s main room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nova grabbed her by the shoulder and rolled her over, pinning her to the ground hard. “Pinned ya again!”

Lucy kicked in retaliation and swung her over half to the floor, rolling up against one of the cabinets with a hard _thunk_. Both of them froze at the _tink-tink-tink_ of lab equipment above them.

The Alchemist turned around from his project. “Lucy! Nova! Girls, be more careful. Please.”

“Yeah, girls, be more careful,” Otto said from above them, moving the vials away from the edge of the counter and squatting down, tapping his knuckles on the countertop.

“Otto, I could kick your butt any day of the week,” Nova said, rolling off of Lucy and letting her get up.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Lucy asked, climbing up on the counter to sit next to her brother.

Nova shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Hello! Alchemist, you here?” came a familiar voice.

Lucy’s face lit up. “Captain!”

The tall man strode through the main lab door and Lucy threw herself at him with an excited chatter. He caught her and she swung up onto his shoulder. “Hello, Lu! You staying out of trouble, love?”

Lucy beamed at him.

“Good.” Clayton scratched her right above her ear and she made a happy noise.

“No fair,” Otto complained from the countertop.

Lucy stuck her tongue out at him. “I jumped first. You want the shoulder, you have to be faster.”

Otto _humf_ ’ed.

Clayton rubbed him and Nova both on the head on his way past, smiling at their excited faces.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“I forgot that Captain Shuggazoom was always at the lab too,” Otto said, scratching his head. “I guess he did spend some time there since he was best friends with the Alchemist.”

“Yeah. He was always so nice to us,” Lucy sighed, but chuckled just as quickly.

A few more scenes passed by them, much quicker than the first two. A scene of herself and Nova in the bath, splashing each other and laughing. A scene of Otto watching curiously as the Alchemist put some touches on something big, glowy, green, and circular (his saws, Otto realized). A scene of the two of them buried in a pile of the Alchemist’s books, reading (or at least looking at the pictures).

“We were really close, weren’t we?” Otto noted softly.

Lucy squeezed his hand. “I think we were, yeah.”

He turned back to her and his brows were pinched with worry. “But Lucy… when you… when we have to go back home, you’re gonna have to go too, for real, this time. You’re not… you’re not real.”

“Not alive, you mean.”

“You know what I mean. You always knew what I meant.” And that was true, he realized. Lucy did always know what he was talking about, even when he had a hard time explaining something or used weird words because he forgot the actual descriptors. She always knew. They were alike like that.

“I’m sorry, Otto. I want to go back with you, but I’m gone already, and you just have to… to figure that out. You always figured stuff out, you were so smart it made my head hurt.” She kissed him next to his lens. “You still have the rest of the team. Sparx, Gibson, Nova, Antauri, Mandarin.” Otto winced at Mandarin’s name but she didn’t comment on it. “You’ll be all right.”

* * *

All six Monkeys popped back into the In-Between only a few seconds after they’d left it. The Power Primate was kind enough to bend time for them. Lucy squeezed Otto’s hand, and Natsu clapped his hand on Sparx’s shoulder, and Delphei put his hand on Antauri’s arm. As one, all of them approached Chiro and Nova and Gibson.

Nova rushed for Lucy and grabbed her up in a big hug. “Lucy… Lucy, I’m so sorry, I…”

“You forgot about me. I know.” Lucy wriggled herself out of Nova’s grip and tangled her tail around hers. “ _Power Primate._ Otto told me all about it already. It’s okay. Oh, Nova, I missed you too. A lot.”

Nova put her hands on Lucy’s shoulders and just drank in her appearance. The lime-green Monkey was the only other girl they’d ever had on the team. She ran her fingertips over her lenses and Lucy blinked hard. “Guess pink eyes are traditional for us girls, huh?” she said, smiling.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lucy shrugged. “I tried to get the Alchemist to pick a different color for mine, I wanted purple, but he had already picked yours and he wanted us to match.” She grinned.

They made more small talk as the boys all gathered around. There was a chatter of conversation all around as the three lost Monkeys got re-acquainted with their teammates. Laughter echoed in the white space and it was almost something like peace.

Natsu squinted up at Chiro for a few minutes, brow furrowed, and Chiro waved awkwardly. The maroon monkey pursed his lips. “Hey, anybody going to address the elephant in the room?”

Conversation died down immediately. “What?” Gibson said, perplexed.

Natsu pointed at Chiro. “So, there’s one of two things that happened here. Either Mandarin turned into a human, or Captain Clayton had a kid.”

Otto and Sparx hid wheezes behind their hands.

“Uhh… neither?” Chiro said awkwardly.

Natsu snapped his fingers disappointedly. “Aw…” He looked back up at the boy just as quickly. “Okay, so why do we have a kid, then?”

“It’s not right anyway, because the math doesn’t line up,” Lucy said, elbowing him sharply in the ribs. He winced. “Humans have long life spans, and they don’t have kids most of the time until they’re grown.” She did the math on her fingers. “He looks like a teenager. Add one, two…” She looked up at Chiro and held out her hand. “If anything, he’s Captain Clayton’s grandkid. Maybe great-grandkid.”

Chiro raked a hand through his hair. “Well, I don’t know about that…”

“Did we ever consider Chiro being related?” Nova asked Antauri.

“I don’t believe so,” Antauri said, a hint of a smile teasing at his lips, his first true smile since they’d come to the In-Between.

“Huh.” Nova put her chin in her hand.

“Did anyone answer my question?” Natsu asked helplessly, buried in a sea of other beings all talking at once.

Otto raised his hand and Natsu clapped his hand on his shoulder. Otto beamed. “Chiro’s the Chosen One!”

Conversation halted once more. “Chosen One?” Delphei’s quiet question rang out in the silence.

Antauri explained quickly about the Chosen One prophecy and Delphei tapped his fingers together pensively. “Oh. I see.”

“Okay, so he’s not Mandarin,” Natsu concluded, raising his brow once more.

Lucy picked up his train of thought. “Where _is_ Mandarin? You didn’t bring him with you? I would have thought he would have wanted to come, considering he’s in charge of all of us…”

The team looked at each other and at Chiro and winced.

“Did… something happen to Mandarin?” Delphei asked, tilting his head.

Antauri sighed and stepped forward once again, explaining as simply as he could, without going into too many details, about what had happened to their eldest brother. How he had tried to rule Shuggazoom and the team mutinied and sent him away. How he had reawakened and allied himself with Skeleton King. How he was now at the Skull Sorceress’s side.

Lucy inhaled sharply. “I never would have thought… I mean, he was, like, sometimes _mean_ , but I thought that was just because he was the eldest! I thought big brothers were just… like that, you know? And there were a lot of us, nine total, so I thought he was just grumpy and overbearing because he was just stressed over all of us! It was kind of understandable.”

“That’s… upsetting,” Delphei murmured, brows furrowing. “He did touch the portal, I remember that. And Lu, you remember that we always did think… that perhaps the energy of the Dark Ones did… did affect him somehow.”

“Mandarin always was a pain in the ass but he was our big brother,” Natsu said, rubbing the back of his head. “I thought I wanted to know why he wasn’t here… but now I’m kind of sorry I asked.”

“No, it’s all right, it’s a fair question,” Chiro said. “You wouldn’t know.” He smiled, and the three monkeys smiled back.

Chatter resumed and conversation went on for a little while longer. The three Monkeys talked excitedly with Chiro, and he knelt down to their level and talked about himself, about the things he liked, about his training, about the Power Primate. Lucy climbed up and settled herself on his shoulder and stuck her tongue out at her twin who complained from the ground. She relented as Natsu tried to climb up next to her. Chiro relegated himself to being a tree and let all three of the Monkeys have a turn at being tall. He grinned, putting Delphei down gently after his turn.

“You guys… you guys are okay? Really?” Sparx asked after the chatter had died down a little.

“There’s not anything that we can do, Sparx,” Lucy said. “It’s done.”

“It really is okay,” Delphei said quietly, folding his arms and looking around at everyone. “We’re not upset at any of you, or Father, or Captain Clayton. We missed you… and we’re glad to see you, honestly.”

“We’re fine,” Natsu said, putting his hands on his hips. “The next journey is great and we’re fine with our lot. Really, we didn’t know if we’d ever see you guys again, and we were a little sad about that, but I guess the Power Primate wanted to get us all some closure, so here we are.”

“I feel bad, though, because it’s like they’re mourning for us again,” Lucy said, brow furrowing. “They mourned already, when we died, and now it’s like they’re doing it all over again.”

“You’re right, Lu…” Delphei mused. He looked at the little group before him. “Please don’t do that. Please don’t mourn us again. Like Natsu said, we’re happy on our next journey, and we don’t want you to be sad.”

Natsu looked over the group and settled on his brother. “Haven’t you guys been through a lot together? Sure sounds like it, anyway. You’ve become a team, the six of you together. And as long as you are there for each other…” He took Delphei’s hand and Delphei took Lucy’s “…we know that Shuggazoom’s in good hands.”

“Otto…” Lucy sighed, letting go of Delphei’s hand and heading for her brother once more. “Otto, look at me.” He did so, lip trembling. She smiled at him gently. “You have to turn those corners up.” She poked at the corners of his mouth. “Smile. Turn those corners up, or all your happiness will spill right out. You always had a kind, sweet heart and an incredible, unmatchable intelligence. You’re going to be all right.”

Otto threw his arms around his sister. “I’m gonna miss you, Lucy.”

“I’ll always be with you, you know,” she hummed. “I promise.”

Natsu let go of Delphei’s hand and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, Sparx. Don’t be mad at Dad anymore, all right? He did the best he could and it’s really not his fault how things turned out.”

“I know… but I want to blame someone,” Sparx mumbled. “I can’t just blame _fate_ , that’s not _real_ enough.”

Natsu took a deep breath and put both his hands on Sparx’s shoulders. “You heard what I said before, right? I’m happy. I’m happy where I am. I missed you and I’m glad to see you but I’m happy. It shouldn’t matter what happened as long as we’re happy in the end.”

Sparx exhaled and met his brother’s gaze. “…okay.”

Natsu hugged him tight around the shoulders. “Sparx, I’m your brother, and I say this with all the love I have for you—you’re such a _moron_. I don’t know how anybody deals with you.”

Sparx let out a weak chuckle. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been told.”

“Ah, it’s going to be all right though. Everyone else is here for you.”

Sparx buried his fingers in the thick fur of Natsu’s back. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“I know. It’s gonna be okay. Don’t forget me, and I won’t ever be far away.”

Delphei reached out and Antauri slid both hands into his, smooth bright metal into smooth dark metal. “Antauri… I know that there’s a lot going on in that head of yours.” He squeezed his hands. “I don’t… I don't want you to be sad because of me. You said you’d never forget me, and I want you to be happy when you remember me. I want to be something that comforts you… just like you always comforted me when the world was loud and we were quiet together.”

Antauri smiled, a thin, worried smile. “Delphei, I wish I could had had more time with you… a few moments of time does not make up for an entire childhood’s worth of lost memories.”

“Maybe you’ll remember more soon.” Delphei squeezed his hands. “But I have to go, Antauri, and your journey has to continue on. You still have to look after your team, and be there for your family.” He tilted his head and closed his eyes. “I didn’t get to learn a lot with the Power Primate, but I know this much: trust in your family, trust in your team, and you’ll always know the right way to go.”

Antauri threw his arms around his brother’s shoulders. “I will always remember you, Delphei.”

“Hold me in your heart, and I won’t ever leave you,” Delphei hummed, squeezing him back tightly.

The three monkeys let go of their siblings and once more the five Hyperforce members formed a tight knot around Chiro. Delphei, Natsu, and Lucy joined hands once again, waving goodbye one last time. Then a harsh wind blasted suddenly through the In-Between, and the team hunched together, shielding themselves from the sharp breeze. The clouds whipped in the wind, blowing around and around and around them until it seemed as though they were in the center of a tornado.

In an instant the wind stopped short and the air stilled. Chiro was the first to stand up and blink, and the Monkeys followed suit. It had all faded away like a dream, like nothing had ever happened at all. They were in the middle of the thick scraggly lawn, the Alchemist’s lab looming high above them.

“We’re… we’re back?” Nova managed.

“It appears so,” Gibson said.

“Back on Shuggazoom,” Otto said, with half a hint of regret in his voice.

“Let’s… let’s go home, team,” Chiro said. Whatever had happened, it was over.

The team nodded in agreement. Sparx ran off to find wherever he’d stashed his Fist Rocket and had it docked back on the Robot’s wrist by the time the rest of them made it back.

The flight back to Shuggazoom City was a rather silent one, but Chiro was thankful for the silence. The Monkeys needed the time still to work through everything, and he would let them. They were grieving.

The Super Robot landed and locked back down to its docking pad and the team emerged from their cockpits. Chiro sighed and changed out of Hyper Form. He felt something tug at his hand and it was Sparx. He let himself be pulled over to the center of all the pod-chairs, where the rest of the team was gathered already. He knelt down with surprise.

“We… we just wanted to let you know, we’re sorry, kid,” Sparx began awkwardly.

“We didn’t want you to… to be hurt by all this,” Nova said softly.

“I found out first, when I went to the lab,” Gibson admitted. “And that, of course, is what has had me quite rattled over the past week. My apologies, Chiro. My inaction, my unwillingness to share the burden of what I had learned, did hurt all of us, and it especially hurt you, Chiro, and I am very, very sorry.”

The corner of Chiro’s mouth turned up. “Isn’t… isn’t the first thing you told me when I brought Jinmay here for the first time that as a team we shouldn’t keep secrets? I know, some things turned up along the way, like Mandarin, but for the most part we’ve been fine, right?” He exhaled and smiled. “Look, guys, I know… I know that you’re here for me, but I’m here for you, too. You can trust me with all this stuff, even the… the hard stuff. I know you don’t want me to have more to worry about… but…”

“Chiro, we didn’t want to burden your heart unnecessarily,” Antauri said softly. “We truly do care about you too much to put more on your shoulders.”

Otto sighed. “But we shoulda told you, we made it worse by not telling, and we’re sorry, Chiro.”

“It’s okay,” Chiro said, holding out his hand. As one, the Monkeys all reached for it. “We’re a team. No monkey team member is ever alone, no matter what.”

And then they were all in a big knot of limbs and fur, hugging each other and hugging Chiro who was in the middle of all of it. There wasn’t any need to worry any more, no need to fear. The burden was lifted, and there was no need to carry it. They would always have the memories with them, and that was enough. That’s what their twins wanted.

It is said that time heals all wounds, and perhaps that is not entirely true. Time can lessen the pain, but the wounds of painful memories may still leave scars. Scars that can still ache, can still remind you of the presence of the old wound. But love, faith, and strength are powerful forces, and with those by your side, there can be reason to still hope in tomorrow, despite the sorrows of the past.

Chiro smiled and hugged his Monkeys close. The other Monkeys had wanted them to be together. And the team would face this together, as they had faced all the trouble and danger that they had throughout their time together. He loved his Monkeys, and he knew, in the deepest recesses of his soul, that they loved him too, and the Power Primate knit them together as proof of that bond.

_Never alone. Never. I promise._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed reading this emotional roller coaster as much as I loved writing it! This story started out as a simple 'what if' scenario and got bigger and more involved than I ever thought it would! But I am both happy and sad to end it, just like all the Monkeys are both happy and sad to have had those special moments of reunion with their twins! Writing all those flashbacks was _really_ fun, it was the first time I've ever really tried to explore the past of the Robot Monkeys as young monkeys! and I hope that you found them as adorable as I did :D
> 
> I tried really hard to give the twins personalities that were similar to their canon monkey twins, but still unique and distinct! Like Natsu has the same bravado as Sparx can have, and the troublemaking tendencies, but he's a little louder and a _bit_ more of a jock-type. And Antauri and Delphei are both quiet, but Delphei's quietness comes from being incredibly shy, and Antauri was always the shoulder for Delphei to lean on. Otto and Lucy are both incredibly kind and smart (and autistic) but their hyperfixations leaned in two slightly different directions - engineering for Otto and medical for Lucy!
> 
> Let me know your thoughts on the story or the twins themselves, either in the comments or come talk to me at my monkey tumblr [ sweetcircuits!](https://sweetcircuits.tumblr.com)
> 
> Edit: [ BABY MONKEY FANART!!!](https://superrobotmonkeyteamramblingsgo.tumblr.com/post/643704929923612672/so-slight-spoiler-warning-for-a-fic-as-here-we) all the monkeys with their twins 😭 They're sooo cute, thank you so much!


End file.
